The Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) is a research institute located in

Garching Garching bei München (, ''Garching near Munich'') or Garching is a city in Bavaria, near Munich. It is the home of several research institutes and university departments, located at Campus Garching. History Spatial urban planning Garching was ...

, near

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, Germany. It specializes in

high energy physics Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and neutrons, while the stu ...

and

astroparticle physics Astroparticle physics, also called particle astrophysics, is a branch of particle physics that studies elementary particles of astrophysical origin and their relation to astrophysics and cosmology. It is a relatively new field of research emergi ...

. The MPP is part of the

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

and is also known as the

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg (; ; 5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist, one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics and a principal scientist in the German nuclear program during World War II. He pub ...

Institute, after its first director in its current location. The founding of the institute traces back to 1914, as an idea from

Fritz Haber Fritz Jakob Haber (; 9 December 1868 – 29 January 1934) was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrog ...

Walther Nernst Walther Hermann Nernst (; 25 June 1864 – 18 November 1941) was a German physical chemist known for his work in thermodynamics, physical chemistry, electrochemistry, and solid-state physics. His formulation of the Nernst heat theorem helped ...

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (; ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quantum, quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial con ...

Emil Warburg Emil Gabriel Warburg (; 9 March 1846 – 28 July 1931) was a German physicist who during his career was professor of physics at the Universities of Strassburg, Freiburg and Berlin. He was president of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft 1899� ...

Heinrich Rubens Heinrich Rubens (; 30 March 1865 – 17 July 1922) was a German physicist. He is known for his measurements of the energy of black-body radiation which led Max Planck to the discovery of his Planck's law, radiation law. This was the genesis of Qu ...

. On October 1, 1917, the institute was officially founded in Berlin as '' Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik'' (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics) with

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

as the first head director.Geschichte
" (in German). Max Planck Institute for Physics. Abbreviated version in English:

." Retrieved 2015-08-30. In October 1922,

Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 "for his discovery of the X-ray diffraction, diffraction of X-rays by crystals". In addition to his scientifi ...

succeeded Einstein as managing director. Einstein gave up his position as a director of the institute in April 1933. The Institute took part in the

German nuclear weapon project Nazi Germany undertook several research programs relating to nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, before and during World War II. These were variously called () or (). The first effort started in April 1939, ju ...

from 1939 to 1942. In June 1942,

took over as managing director. A year after the end of fighting in Europe in World War II, the institute was moved to

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

and renamed the Max Planck Institute for Physics, with Heisenberg continuing as managing director. In 1946,

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 28 June 1912 – 28 April 2007) was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, un ...

and

Karl Wirtz Karl Eugen Julius Wirtz (24 April 1910 – 12 February 1994) was a German nuclear physicist, born in Cologne. He was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces and incarcerated at Farm Hall for six months in 1945 under Operation E ...

joined the faculty as the directors for theoretical and experimental physics, respectively. In 1955 the institute made the decision to move to Munich, and soon after began construction of its current building, designed by

Sep Ruf Sep Ruf (full name Franz Joseph Ruf; 9 March 1908, in Munich – 29 July 1982, in Munich) was a German architect and designer strongly associated with the Bauhaus group. He was one of the representatives of modern architecture in Germany af ...

. The institute moved into its current location on September 1, 1958, and took on the new name the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, still with Heisenberg as the managing director. In 1991, the institute was split into the Max Planck Institute for Physics, the

Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics The Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) is a research institute located in Garching, just north of Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It is one of many scientific research institutes belonging to the Max Planck Society. The MPA is widely consid ...

and the

Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics The Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics is part of the Max Planck Society, located in Garching, near Munich, Germany. In 1991 the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics split up into the Max Planck Institute for Extraterr ...

Structure

There are three departments with multiple research groups: * Structure of matter **Innovative calculation methods in particle physics ( Giulia Zanderighi) **Quantum field theory and scattering amplitudes (Johannes Henn) **String theory (

Dieter Lüst Dieter Lüst (born 21 September 1956 in Chicago) is a German physicist, full professor for mathematical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich since 2004 and a director of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich. His resear ...

) ** ATLAS detector ( Siegfried Bethke) ** Belle II experiment (Hans-Günther Moser) **Gravitational theory (Angnis Schmidt-May) *New technologies **

AWAKE Wakefulness is a daily recurring brain state and state of consciousness in which an individual is conscious and engages in coherent cognitive and behavioral responses to the external world. Being awake is the opposite of being asleep, in which ...

– Plasma Wakefield Acceleration (Patric Muggli) ** ILC and CLIC: Linear Colliders (Frank Simon) *Astroparticle physics **Particle physics and cosmology ( Georgi Dvali) **Theoretical astroparticle physics (Georg G. Raffelt) ** COSINUS experiment (Karoline Schäffner) ** CRESST experiment (Federica Petricca) ** GERDA and LEGEND: the nature of the neutrino ( Allen Caldwell) **

KATRIN Katrin is a feminine given name. It is a German and Swedish contracted form of Katherine. Katrin may refer to: Sports * Katrin Apel (born 1973), German biathlete * Katrin Beinroth (born 1981), German judoka * Katrin Borchert (born 1969), Germa ...

and

TRISTAN Tristan (Latin/ Brythonic: ''Drustanus''; ; ), also known as Tristran or Tristram and similar names, is the folk hero of the legend of Tristan and Iseult. While escorting the Irish princess Iseult to wed Tristan's uncle, King Mark of ...

: Neutrinos and dark matter (Susanne Mertens) **MADMAX experiment: searching for axion dark matter (Béla Majorovits) **

MAGIC Magic or magick most commonly refers to: * Magic (supernatural), beliefs and actions employed to influence supernatural beings and forces ** ''Magick'' (with ''-ck'') can specifically refer to ceremonial magic * Magic (illusion), also known as sta ...

and CTA: Gamma ray telescopes (Masahiro Teshima)

Current and former directors

The current directorial board of the institute is * Allen Caldwell *

Giorgi Dvali Georgi (Gia) Dvali ( Georgian: გიორგი (გია) დვალი; born 30 May 1964) is a Georgian theoretical physicist. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, a director at the Max ...

Johannes Henn Johannes is a Medieval Latin form of the personal name that usually appears as "John" in English language contexts. It is a variant of the Greek and Classical Latin variants (Ιωάννης, '' Ioannes''), itself derived from the Hebrew name '' Ye ...

* Marumi Kado *

* Masahiro Teshima * Giulia Zanderighi (current managing director) Former directors of the institute include: * Siegfried Bethke *

Ludwig Biermann Ludwig Franz Benedikt Biermann (March 13, 1907 in Hamm – January 12, 1986 in München) was a German astronomer, obtaining his Ph.D. from Göttingen University in 1932. He made important contributions to astrophysics and plasma physics, d ...

Heinz Billing Heinz Billing (7 April 1914 – 4 January 2017) was a German physicist and computer scientist, widely considered a pioneer in the construction of computer systems and computer data storage, who built a prototype laser interferometric gravitatio ...

* Gerd Buschhorn *

Peter Debye Peter Joseph William Debye ( ; born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije, ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born in Maastricht, Neth ...

Hans-Peter Dürr Hans-Peter Dürr (7 October 1929 – 18 May 2014) was a German physicist. He worked on nuclear physics, nuclear and quantum physics, elementary particles and gravitation, epistemology, and philosophy, and he advocated responsible scientific and ...

* Gerhard von Gierke *

Leon Van Hove Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again fro ...

* Norbert Schmitz * Leo Stodolsky *

References

External links

Homepage of the Max Planck Institute for Physics

Physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

Physics research institutes 1917 establishments in Germany {{physics-org-stub