Hans Kastrup

Professor em. for Theoretical Physics, RWTH Aachen, Germany;     since 2001 Guest Scientist at     DESY-Hamburg, Theory Group     Bldg. 1b/ Rm. O3.215     Notkestrasse 85, 22607 Hamburg     Germany     Phone: +49-40-8998-2416     Email: hans.kastrup@desy.de

•  Born July 4, 1934, in Bielefeld, Germany;1941-1945 Elementary School in the village Jöllenbeck near Bielefeld
• 1946-1955 Helmholtz-Gymnasium, Bielefeld
• 1955-1962  Physics student at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich, Germany
• May 1962 PhD in Theoretical  Physics from the LMU of Munich;
  Thesis adviser: Fritz Bopp. Referees: F. Bopp and Werner Heisenberg;
  Topic of thesis: Conformal symmetries in particle physics
• 1961-1964 Assistent at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of  the LMU Munich
• July 1964 Habilitation, Privatdozent for Theoretical Physics at the LMU Munich; Referees: F. Bopp and W. Heisenberg
• 1964-1965 Research Associate at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley
• 1965-1966 Research Associate at the Physics Department of Princeton University (invitation by Eugene Wigner)
• 1966-1967 Guest Lecturer at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Bern, Switzerland
• 1967-1972 Associate Professor for Theoretical Physics, Institute for Theoretical Physics, LMU Munich
• 1971 Guest Professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Hamburg University, Germany
• 1972-1999 Full Professor and Director at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the RWTH Aachen, Germany
• 2000-2001 Guest Scientist of the Theory Division, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
• Since 1966 many working stays at a large number of international physics research institutions, e.g. DESY (Hamburg); CERN (Geneva); ICTP (Trieste); Physics Department UC Los Angeles (California); State University of New York (Stony Brook); Brookhaven NL (Upton, New York); Argonne NL (Argonne, Illinois); Fermilab (Batavia, Illinois); CRM (Université de Montréal, Canada); MPI for Physics (Munich); MPI for Quantum Optics (Munich); MPI for Gravitation (Potsdam); MPI for Mathematics in the Sciences (Leipzig);  MPI for Light (Erlangen); Institute for Theoretical Physics, East China University (Shanghai, China); Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University (Beijing, China); Racah Institute of  Physics (Hebrew University, Jerusalem); Department of Theoretical Physics at the TIFR (Mumbai, India); IUCAA (Pune, India); Physics Department of the Humboldt-University (Berlin); etc.

Main Research Interests

• Symmetries of physical systems and the associated group theories, especially conformal symmetries
• Scaling properties of particle collisions at very high energies
• Structures of field theories, classical and quantum
• Lattice field theories
• Group-theoretical quantization of topologically non-trivial phase spaces
• Quantum gravity, astrophysics
• Foundations of quantum theory
• Historical and philosophical aspects of physical theories

Publications