Klaus 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, WA, USA he graduated in 2000 as Doctor rerum naturalium in Physics. From 2000 to 2002 he was Postdoctoral Research Associate of GSI Darmstadt and until 2004 Research Associate at the European Organization for Nuclear ResearchCERN, Geneva, Switzerland and Project Leader for "Mass spectrometry of exotic nuclides with ISOLTRAP" at ISOLDE. In October 2004 Klaus Blaum became Project Leader of the "Helmholtz Research Group for Young Investigators" on "Experiments with Stored and Cooled Ions" at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. In 2006 he habilitated in experimental physics at the University Mainz about High precision mass spectrometry with Penning traps and storage rings. From 2004 to 2008 Klaus Blaum taught at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. His achievement was honored with the Teaching Award of Rheinland-Pfalz 2006. 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 at the Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Germany. In November 2008 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. After his first term, he was again vice chairman of the advisory committee "Hadrons and Nuclei" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2018 to March 2020. During the membership period 2012-2019 Klaus Blaum was a member of the DFG Review Board 308 "Optics, Quantum Optics and Physics of Atoms, Molecules and Plasmas". From June 2016 to December 2019 he was Deputy Chairman of the FAIR/GSI Joint Scientific Council, Chairman of the Scientific Committee of GSI and Member of the Supervisory Board of GSI. Since July 2020, Klaus Blaum is Vice President of the Max Planck Society and responsible for the Institutes of the Chemistry, Physics and Technology Section.
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
Klaus Blaum received numerous prizes for his scientific work, among others the Gustav-Hertz-Prize 2004 of the German Physical Society and the Mattauch-Herzog-Prize 2005 of the German Society for Mass Spectrometry. On March 4 he received the GENCO Membership Award 2010 of the GSI Exotic Nuclei Community. Klaus Blaum has been selected to receive one of the prestigious ERC Advanced Grants 2011 for his projects on Precision Measurements of Fundamental Constants. In 2012, he won the Helmholtz Prize for precision measurements together with his students Anke Wagner and Sven Sturm. The award ceremony took place on March 27 on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig, Germany. In March 2013 Klaus Blaum was awarded the G. N. Flerov Prize 2013 by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, for outstanding contributions to the development of high-precision Penning-trap mass spectrometry with nuclear physics applications. In April 2016 he was selected by the Gothenburg Physics Centre to receive the Gothenburg Lise Meitner Prize 2016 "for the development of innovative techniques for high-precision measurements of stored radioactive ions". In 2019, Klaus Blaum was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In March 2019, he was for the second time awarded with an ERC Advanced Grant for the test of fundamental interactions.
