Jürgen Renn is recipient of the 2023 Abraham Pais Prize given annually by the American Physical Society in recognition of outstanding scholarly achievements in the history of physics. Renn is an esteemed historian of science, whose scholarship focuses on the global development of knowledge as it led to the Anthropocene epoch. Since 1994 he has served as director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and in 2022 became founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena. Renn is honorary professor for History of Science at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Freie Universität Berlin and has taught at Boston University, the ETH in Zurich, and University of Tel Aviv. His numerous honors include the Premio Anassilaos International, the ESHS Neuenschwander Prize, the Premio Internazionale Marco & Alberto Ippolito, the Max Planck Communitas Award, and the Francis Bacon Award.
With Princeton University Press, Renn is author of The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene, a “tour de force” (Science) that “powerfully advances our understanding of how knowledge operates in society” (Times Higher Education). Renn is coauthor, with Hanoch Gutfreund, of several volumes about Albert Einstein, including Einstein on Einstein: Autobiographical and Scientific Reflections, The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein’s Princeton Lectures, and The Road to Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein’s “The Foundation of General Relativity.” Forthcoming in late 2023, in North America, and early 2024, in Europe and the United Kingdom with The Einsteinian Revolution: The Historical Roots of His Breakthrough. A former coeditor of the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Renn has also contributed to Princeton University Press’s 100th anniversary edition of Relativity and Einstein Was Right: The Science and History of Gravitational Waves, edited by Jed Z. Buchwald.
Princeton University Press is grateful to have maintained these ongoing collaborations with Jürgen Renn and offer him our congratulations on this newest honor.