Moritz Epple
Moritz Epple (7 May 1960, Stuttgart) is a German mathematician and historian of science. Biography. Epple studied mathematics, philosophy and physics at the University of Tübingen, where he received in 1987 his bachelor's degree ("Diplom") in physics and in 1991 his Ph.D. ("Promotion)" in mathematical physics. He then became an assistant in the history of mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Mainz, where he received in 1998 his "Habilitation". From 2001 to 2003 he was the head of the department of history of the natural sciences and technology at the University of Stuttgart. Since 2003  he has been a professor at the Goethe University of Frankfurt and head of the working group for the modern history of science at the historic seminary there. He was a visiting professor at several academic institutions including the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin. His habilitation thesis on the history of knot theory was published in 1999 under the title "Die Entstehung der Knotentheorie – Kontexte und Konstruktionen einer modernen mathematischen Theorie" (with 2nd edition in 2013). He also wrote the article on  knot theory in the book "History of Topology" edited by Ioan James. He has done research on the history of mathematical analysis, for example the article "Geschichte der Grundlagen der Analysis 1860 – 1930" in the 1999 book "Geschichte der Analysis" edited by Jahnke; Epple wrote on, among other topics, Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer and applied mathematical research in Germany during WW II. His historical research has also dealt with the epistemological works of Felix Hausdorff and Jewish mathematicians in German-speaking academic culture. From 2000 to 2001 he was a Heisenberg Fellow. He was a board member of the "Deutschen  Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaft und Technik" and a co-editor of "NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin". Since 2013 he has been a co-editor of the journal "Science in Context". In 2002 at the ICM in Beijing he was an Invited Speaker with talk "From Quaternions to cosmology – spaces of constant curvature 1873–1925". In 2015 Epple with his Frankfurt team received the media prize of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung for the exhibition "Transcending Tradition". On 26 November 2016, Epple was elected a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina.