History of the E11 chair

The roots of today’s Physics Department at TUM date back to the founding of the Munich Polytechnic School in 1868. In 1877, it was renamed the Technical University of Munich (Technische Hochschule München, THM), and in 1970 it finally received its current name, the Technical University of Munich (Technische Universität München, TUM). At the time of its founding in 1868, the Physical Institute was established as well, originally bearing the name Physikalisches Cabinet. In parallel, technical physics was considered a particular priority from the very beginning. At the initiative of Carl von Linde (1842–1934), a prominent industrialist and honorary professor at the THM, the Laboratory for Technical Physics was founded in 1902. An independent Institute for Theoretical Physics was established later, in 1943.

In order to bring Rudolf L. Mössbauer (1929–2011, Nobel Prize 1961) back from the United States to Munich, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (1911–2000) took the initiative and, together with his colleagues Professors Brenig, Riehl, and Wild, proposed the establishment of a Physics Department in a memorandum in 1962. Rudolf Mössbauer accepted the offer of the Bavarian State Government to join the THM in 1964, under the condition that a Physics Department be created.

This was realized in 1965, with the establishment of ten additional professorships. These positions were designated with “E” for Experimental Physics and “T” for Theoretical Physics, followed by a two-digit number starting from 10. Wolfgang Kaiser (1925–2023), appointed in 1964, was second alphabetically, and his chair was therefore designated “E11.” Kaiser brought the emerging fields of laser physics and time-resolved spectroscopy from the United States to Munich (see his curriculum vitae).

Following the retirement of Wolfgang Kaiser in 1993, Alfred Laubereau (1942–2025) was appointed to the E11 chair. He established time-resolved infrared spectroscopy and gained valuable insights into the dynamics of local structures in solids and liquids (see his curriculum vitae). Hundreds of research groups worldwide have since adopted this approach and continue to pursue it today.

In 2008, Reinhard Kienberger (*1971) was appointed associate professor to the E11 chair within the framework of the Excellence Cluster “Munich Center for Advanced Photonics.” Together with adjunct professor Hristo Iglev (*1973), he continued work in ultrafast spectroscopy and established attosecond physics at the chair. After receiving several external offers, Reinhard Kienberger was appointed full professor in 2013 as the successor to the now emeritus Alfred Laubereau at the E11 chair.