Joachim Maier has been Director at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart (Germany) and head of the Physical Chemistry of Solids department from 1991 to 2023. J. Maier studied chemistry in Saarbrücken, obtained his Masters and PhD in Physical Chemistry there. He completed his professorial thesis (Habilitation) at the University of Tübingen. From 1988 to 1991 he was responsible for the activities on functional ceramics at the MPI for Metals Research in Stuttgart, and from 1988 to 1996 (as a Foreign Faculty Member) he taught defect chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1991, after having declined other prestigious offers (Materials Science M.I.T., Institute of New Materials Saarbrücken, Physical Chemistry Marburg), he was appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society, Director at the MPI for Solid State Research and Honorary Professor at the University of Stuttgart.
J. Maier has authored/co-authored more than 825 scientific papers in refereed journals and 26 patents in the field of physical chemistry and electrochemistry of the solid state. His major research field is ion transport in solids. He is also author or editor of several books and has organised various international conferences on these subjects. Under this headline, research is devoted to electrochemistry, equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics of charge carriers and chemical kinetics of solid state processes (Electrochemistry, Solid State Ionics, Nanoionics).
He was awarded both the PhD Award Fellowship and the Lecturer Award Fellowship of the German Chemical Industry. He received the Carl-Duisberg-Award of the German Chemical Society, the E.-Martin-Prize of the University of Saarbrücken, the Norman Hackerman Award of the Electrochemical Society and the Senior Scientist Award of the International Society of Solid State Ionics. He is co-recipient of the 2002, 2004 and 2005 Edward C. Henry Awards and of the 2005 Ross Coffin Purdy Award of The American Ceramic Society. He is a member of Leopoldina, the German National Academy of Sciences, a member of the German Academy of Sciences and Literature (Mainz), a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), a member of the Academia Europaea, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and an Honorary Member of the National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana. He was Visiting Professor at the M.I.T. and TU Graz; he was appointed Herbert-Johnson-Award lecturer (Cornell University), Richard-Willstätter lecturer of the GDCh (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Seidman lecturer (Technion) and Lecture-Professor (Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science Beijing). He also gave the Wilhelm-Jost lecture series of the Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft (2007). He was Vice President (2011-2013) and President (2013-2015) of the International Society for Solid State Ionics.
Joachim Maier is Editor-in-Chief of Solid State Ionics (until 2024) and on the Board of various scientific journals (Adv. Funct. Mater., Chem. Mater., J. Electroceramics, J. Solid State Electrochem., Z. Phys. Chem., Materials Science Foundations, Trends in Physical Chemistry). He served as officer on councils of various societies and organisations (ISE, ISSI, DBG, GDCh, MPG, BDI, IAEA, FZ Jülich among others); he was chairman of the Solid State Chemistry Division of GDCh, chairman of the New Topics Committee (International Society of Electrochemistry) and Titular Member of the IUPAC Physical and Biophysical Chemistry Division Committee.
