Gregor Lax

Gregor Lax’s main interests lie in the history of science policy, of organizational, institutional and structural developments in science as well as the genesis, development and power of science policy discourse formations. After completing the MA program “History, Philosophy and Sociology of Sciences” (HPSS) he received his doctorate from the University of Bielefeld in 2014. The focus of his doctoral thesis was on the relationship between basic and applied research in the context of science policy and innovation in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1945. From 2011 to 2014 Lax worked as a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz as part of a project on the institute’s history. The research focus of his postdoctoral projects between 2014 and 2016, which were also supported by the MPIC, was on the history of the atmospheric sciences in Germany. In 2016–2017 he worked as a science coordinator for the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), where he supervised the evaluation of extensive research infrastructure projects, especially in the field of atmospheric and Earth system sciences, for a national roadmap for the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. In addition, he was concerned with strategies for the promotion of excellence, transfer processes as well as the current debate on a potential erosion of trust in science. In January 2018, Gregor Lax started working as a Research Scholar in the GMPG Research Program on the history of Earth system research in the MPG.