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.