Prof. Dr. Klaus Blaum is honored with the Stern-Gerlach Medal by the German Physical Society (DPG) “In recognition of his pioneering developments of Penning ion traps into spectroscopic precision measuring instruments and their applications for tests of the four fundamental interactions, their symmetries, the fundamental constants and thus the standard model of particle physics”. This is the DPG’s most prestigious honor for outstanding achievements in experimental physics, and it is awarded for work covering the whole field of physics. The award will be presented in March 2025 during the 88th Annual Meeting of the DPG in Bonn.
As Director at the MPI for Nuclear Physics, Klaus Blaum heads the division division “Stored and cooled ions”. It deals with precision experiments to determine atomic and nuclear ground state properties of stored ions for tests of fundamental interactions and their symmetries as well as with the study of elementary processes of molecular ions. For this purpose, short-lived radionuclides, antimatter, highly charged ions or simple molecular ions are trapped in Penning traps or in the cryogenic storage ring CSR under space conditions. The development of new storage, cooling and detection techniques for future experiments is also an important research focus of the division.
Klaus Blaum (*1971 in Bad Sobernheim) studied physics at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, where, after receiving his diploma in 1997 and several research stays at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, USA, he received his doctorate in 2000 under Ernst-Wilhelm Otten (1934 - 2019). Subsequently, he was a research associate at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt until 2002 and worked at the European Nuclear Research Centre CERN near Geneva. There he was project leader for "Mass Spectrometry of Exotic Nuclei with ISOLTRAP at ISOLDE" until 2004. In October 2004, Blaum took over the position of project leader of the Helmholtz-University Young Investigators Group "Experiments with Stored and Cooled Ions" at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz for four years. In 2006 he habilitated there on high-precision mass spectrometry with Penning traps for charged particles and storage rings. Blaum taught at the University of Mainz from 2004 to 2008. He was awarded the 2006 teaching prize of the state of Rheinland-Pfalz for his teaching activities. In 2007 he was appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. This was followed in April 2008 by his appointment as Honorary Professor of the Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg. From 2020 to 2023, as one of three Vice Presidents of the Max Planck Society, he was responsible for the Chemical-Physical-Technical Section.
For his groundbreaking scientific work with a focus on precision experiments on stored and cooled ions, he has received numerous awards, including the Lise Meitner Prize of the European Physical Society in 2020 and the Otto Hahn Prize of the City of Frankfurt am Main, the Society of German Chemists and the German Physical Society in 2021. He has twice gained an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, in 2019 he was accepted as an external member of the physics class at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 2022 he was admitted to the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Since 2024 he is a member of the "German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina - National Academy of Sciences".
