Carsten Reinhardt - Biography#

Carsten Reinhardt holds the chair of Historical Studies of Science at Bielefeld University. He received his M.A. in history, history of science, and chemistry from the Technical University of Berlin, and earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation on industrial research in chemistry at the same university in 1996. His habilitation followed at the University of Regensburg in history of science in 2003. Reinhardt assumed the position he now holds in 2007, interrupted by a three-year service as President of the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia.

Carsten Reinhardt is a leading historian of chemistry in Europe and beyond. His overall profile is to combine the history of chemistry in the twentieth century with the history of technology and the social and cultural context. This combination adds up to the history of scientific methods in chemistry and to the analysis of the interaction between science and society. In particular, his work has focused on four areas: history of industrial research in chemistry in the decades around 1900, introduction of physical methods into chemistry in the twentieth century, regulatory knowledge, i.e., the use of science for controlling the impact of technology on society, and analysis of the scope of historical studies of science. The two latter areas stand in the wider context of studies on the so-called knowledge society.