IUPAP Early Career Prizes in History of Physics 2024 & 2025

The IUCHPP invites nominations for the Early Career Prize in the History of Physics. The prize recognises outstanding contributions to the areas within the remit of the Commission. These include:

  • the history and philosophy of physics in any geographic region;
  • the history of physics in its experimental, instrumental, and theoretical forms;
  • the history of applied physics in industry and laboratory settings;
  • the history of astrophysics, biophysics, and allied disciplines;
  • the history of physics communities and physics diplomacy in a global context;
  • the history of physics within its social, cultural, and political contexts.

We encourage nominations of historians of physics, scholars in the integrated history and philosophy of physics, historically oriented philosophers and sociologists of physics, or scholars from related fields. We encourage nominations of scholars located around the world, including those who may have followed non-traditional career paths, who may have overcome funding difficulties, and/or may have contributed to forming communities at their institutions or in their home countries.

Nominations can be made for any early career scholar working on the history of the physical sciences. Self-nominations will not be considered. The commission will consider nominees with PhD received after 1 Jan 2017 for the 2024 prize and the 2025 prize. Nominees with PhD received after 1 Jan 2016 and before 1 Jan 2017 will be considered for the 2024 prize only.

Two awards will be made, one for 2024 and one for 2025. The prize will include €1,000 and a medal from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). The IUCHPP will also cover travel expenses of the awardees to attend the sixth Biennial Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences, where the IUCHPP will award the prize. The conference will be held at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, Brazil, August 4 to 9, 2025.

Nomination Procedure: Nominations should be emailed to early-career-prize@iuchpp.org in a single PDF file, named Surname.pdf, including:

  • A cover letter by the nominator(s) evaluating the nominee’s contributions to history of physics and identifying the specific achievements and scholarly work for which the nominee is to be recognized;
  • A statement declaring that, to the best of the nominator’s knowledge, the nominee meets the commonly held standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity;
  • A Curriculum Vitae of the nominee including all publications.

The deadline for submissions of nominations is February 28, 2025.

Early Career Prize for the History of Physics 2023

Dr. Jean-Phillipe Martinez

“For his insightful and diverse range of scholarly publications that combine the understanding of the development of physics concepts and mathematical formalism, the analysis of scientific practices in their local and institutional contexts, and transnational historical perspectives examining international channels of communication and science diplomacy.”

After completing a bachelor’s degree in physics at the University of Pau and the Adour Region in southwestern France, Jean-Philippe Martinez developed a growing interest in the history and philosophy of science, a discipline for which he received a Ph.D. from the Paris Diderot University (now Paris Cité) in 2017. His dissertation, dedicated to the Soviet physicist Vladimir Fock and his interpretation of the theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity, provided a new look at the influence of Marxist ideology on the work of Soviet physicists. It was also accompanied by important considerations on the processes of internationalization and scientific diplomacy of Soviet physics in the post-war period.

These investigations were pursued and extended during a postdoctoral period at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil, with a particular focus on the debates on the interpretation of quantum mechanics in the Soviet Union and on the influence of the notion of antireductionism on the work of various Marxist physicists. Since August 2020, Jean-Philippe is a research assistant at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany, as a postdoctoral member of the research unit “The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider.” His research focuses on different developments in high-energy physics and more specifically on the concept of virtual particles.