Hans Joachim Specht: Scientist and Visionary (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9783031923524)

Sanja Damjanovic received her Ph.D. in high-energy nuclear physics from the University of Heidelberg in 2002 under the supervision of a professor Hans J. Specht. Since 1999 she was embedded in international teams and ever since worked at CERN in Geneva and at GSI-FAIR in Darmstadt. Beyond her scientific career, she served as the minister of Science of Montenegro (2016-2020). In 2017, she initiated and led the establishment of SEEIIST, a pan-European research infrastructure for cancer therapy and research, bringing together 10 South East European countries under the mission of Science Diplomacy. She served as the first chairperson of its Steering Committee (2018-2021) and has held a permanent position at GSI since 2021.

Volker Metag studied physics at TU Berlin and the University of Heidelberg where he received his Ph.D. in 1970. He held postdoc positions at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, at the Niels-Bohr-Institute, Copenhagen (Denmark), and at the University of Washington, Seattle (USA). From 1982 until his retirement in 2012 he was a professor for experimental physics at the University of Giessen. His research field is hadron and nuclear physics. He is a member of several international research collaborations and has served on numerous scientific advisory boards and as a co-editor of Physics Letters B. From 1993 to 1998, he was a research director of GSI, Darmstadt, and was involved in the preparation of the FAIR project.

Jurgen Schukraft received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Heidelberg in 1983 under the supervision of Prof. H.J. Specht. Joining CERN in 1984, he worked on proton-proton collisions at the ISR and later heavy-ion experiments at the SPS and Brookhaven's AGS. A founding member of the ALICE experiment at the LHC, he served as its first spokesperson from 1991 to 2010. After his retirement from CERN in 2018, he held a distinguished professorship at CCNU Wuhan and is currently an adjunct professor at Yale University and an affiliated professor at the Niels Bohr Institute.

Hans Joachim Specht was born in 1936 in Unna, Westphalia, Germany. He studied physics at LMU München, TU München, and ETH Zürich, earning his Ph.D. in 1964 under the mentorship of Heinz Maier-Leibnitz at the FRM reactor and TU München. Following research in Canada at the AECL Nuclear Laboratories, he returned to LMU as professor. In 1973, he was appointed professor at the University of Heidelberg, where he initially conducted research at MPI Heidelberg and GSI Darmstadt, later establishing a leading high-energy heavy-ion research group with strong links to CERN. A pioneer of CERN's ultra-relativistic heavy-ion program, Specht contributed to four major experiments: R807/808 at the ISR, HELIOS/NA34 (spokesperson), NA45/CERES (founder and spokesperson), and NA60. His early conceptual design of a heavy-ion experiment at the LHC, along with his advocacy for institutional support, were instrumental in shaping ALICE into one of CERN's flagship experiments. From 1992 to 1999, he served as Scientific Managing Director of GSI, where he initiated Europe's first successful cancer therapy using carbon ions. A member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences since 2000, he became Professor Emeritus in 2004. His research spanned atomic physics (quasi-molecules), nuclear fission (shape isomers), high-energy physics (quark-gluon plasma), and neuroscience (music perception and early brain processing). Over the course of his career, he supervised more than 100 Ph.D. and diploma students. Hans J. Specht passed away on 20 May 2024.