Johanna Stachel

Johanna Stachel completed secondary education in 1972 at the Spohn Gymnasium in Ravensburg. She studied physics and chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) and received a degree from the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in 1978. In 1982 she obtained a doctorate in physics from the same university.

From 1983 to 1996, Stachel studied and worked at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Laboratory where she met her future husband professor Peter Braun-Munzinger. In 1996 she was named professor at the University of Heidelberg. Stachel was spokesperson of the CERN SPS experiment CERES/NA45 and directed the developed the ALICE Transition Radiation Detector.

Stachel was elected President of the German Physical Society for a two-year term starting in 2012. Her two primary priorities as president were first to defend basic research by showing its importance and promote physics education in schools by improving the training of physics teachers and the standards across German schools.

During her career, she has delivered over 150 lectures at international workshops and conferences and has participated in over 100 seminars and colloquia.