Klaus Blaum

Klaus Blaum (born 27 December 1971 in Sobernheim, now Bad Sobernheim, Germany) is a German physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.

Life and scientific work Blaum studied physics at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. After his physics diploma in 1997 and several research visits at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington, US, he graduated in 2000 as Doctor rerum naturalium in physics. From 2000 to 2002 he was postdoctoral research associate of GSI Darmstadt (working group of H. Jürgen Kluge) and until 2004 Research Associate (CERN Fellow) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN, Geneva, Switzerland and Project Leader for "Mass spectrometry of exotic nuclides with ISOLTRAP" at ISOLDE. In October 2007 he was appointed as director and scientific member at the Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. Since April 2008 he is honorary professor (W3) at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Germany.

Main research areas His scientific work focuses on precision experiments with stored and cooled ions as well as the investigation of fundamental processes of molecular ions. Another main research field is the development of novel storage, cooling and detection techniques for future experiments.

Distinctions and awards 1998: Wolfgang-Paul-Prize for Student Research of the German Mass Spectrometry Society (DGMS) 2004: Gustav-Hertz-Prize of the German Physical Society (DPG) 2005: Mattauch-Herzog-Prize of the German Society for Mass Spectrometry (DGMS) 2007: Teaching Award of Rheinland-Pfalz 2008: American Physical Society (APS) Fellowship 2010: GENCO Membership Award of the GSI Exotic Nuclei Community 2011: ERC Advanced Grant for Precision Measurements of Fundamental Constants (MEFUCO) 2012: Helmholtz Prize of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) for precision measurements (together with Anke Wagner and Sven Sturm) 2013: Flerov Prize (together with H.-J. Kluge and Y. Novikov) 2016: Gothenburg Lise Meitner Award of the Gothenburg Physics Centre 2019: ERC Advanced Grant for the test of fundamental interactions (FunI) 2020: Lise Meitner Prize of the European Physical Society (EPS). (together with Björn Jonson and Piet Van Duppen) 2021: Otto Hahn Prize of the City of Frankfurt am Main, the German Chemical Society (GDCh) and the German Physical Society (DPG) 2022: Full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (HAdW) 2022: Honorary Member of the Physikalischer Verein (Frankfurt am Main) 2023: Boltzmann Lecture 2023 at the University of Vienna 2024: Member of the Physics Section of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2025: Stern–Gerlach Medal of the German Physical Society (DPG) 2026: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (DFG) 2026: Hendrik de Waard Lecture 2026 at the University of Groningen

Publications (selection)