Matthias Dörries

Matthias Dörries is Professor of the History of Science at the University of Strasbourg, a position held since 1999. He currently serves as Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin and holds leadership roles including President of the European Inter-University Association on Society, Science, and Technology (ESST) and editorial board member for Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (HSNS).

His educational background includes a PhD from Freie Universität Berlin (1989) and habilitation from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (1998). Prior appointments encompass postdoctoral fellowships at University of California Berkeley, CRHST (CNRS) Paris, Forschungsinstitut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte at Deutsches Museum Munich, and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

Dörries specializes in Cold War-era environmental science history, with research spanning nuclear testing impacts, stratospheric science development, and large-scale geo-engineering projects. His recent conference presentations address climatic extremes from nuclear tests in the Asian Pacific region (1954-1963), research integrity at the Académie des sciences, and Cold War stratospheric aerosol studies, reflecting his transnational approach to scientific history.

His scholarly contributions are characterized by interdisciplinary analysis of geophysical sciences within political and environmental contexts, particularly examining how Cold War imperatives shaped planetary-scale engineering concepts from terraforming to atmospheric intervention.