DE / EN

Prof. Dr. Dennis Lehmkuhl

Picture

​Dennis Lehmkuhl is the Chair of Natural Philosophy and Philosophy of Science, and Lichtenberg Professor of History and Philosophy of Physics at the University of Bonn. His work focuses on theories of gravity, spacetime structure, and how they interact with matter. He is a passionate proponent of integrated history and philosophy of physics; he has worked on Einstein's interpretation of general relativity and of other spacetime theories, and on the question of how Einstein's positions square with the modern debates in the foundations of spacetime theories. He is particularly interested in the analysis and interpretation of black hole physics and gravitational wave physics.

Prof. Lehmkuhl has been an Editor of Albert Einstein's Collected Papers since 2010, and spent 2015 to 2018 as the only full time Scientific Editor at the Einstein Papers Project. Before that, he was a Departmental Lecturer at the University of Oxford, a Junior Professor at the University of Wuppertal, and a visiting fellow at the Center of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He graduated with a DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2010, after graduate studies at Imperial College London, the London School of Economics and the University of Hamburg. Here is a complete
CV: curriculum_vitae_lehmkuhl_may_2024.pdf

Email: dennis.lehmkuhl AT uni-bonn.de
Monograph
  • 'Einstein's Principles. On the Interpretation of Gravity'. Under Contract with Oxford University Press; in preparation.

Edited books and special issues
  • `Weshalb auf die Wissenschaft hören? Antworten aus Philosophie und wissenschaftlicher Praxis’. With Andreas Bartels, Springer 2022. 
  • 'The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 16. The Berlin Years: June 1927 - May 1929’ with Diana Kormos Buchwald, Ze’ev Rosenkranz, Daniel J. Kennefick, József Illy, A. J. Kox, Tilman Sauer, Jennifer Nollar James (eds.); Emily de Araujo, Joshua Eisenthal, Jennifer Rodgers, David Rowe (assoc. eds.). Princeton University Press, 2021.
  • 'The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 15. The Berlin Years: June 1925 - April 1927' with Diana Kormos Buchwald, Ze'ev Rosenkranz, József Illy, Anne Kox (eds.); Daniel J. Kennefick, A.J. Kox, Michel Janssen, Tony Duncan (assoc. eds.), forthcoming with Princeton University Press, 2018. Introduction available online at https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10662.
  • 'Towards a Theory of Spacetime Theories' with Gregor Schiemann and Erhard Scholz. Einstein Studies, Birkäuser/Springer, 2017.
  • Special Issue on 'Particle Physics after the Higgs Discovery' with Simon Friederich, in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Physics, Volume 51, August 2015.
  • 'The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 14. The Berlin Years: April 1923 - June 1925' with Diana Kormos Buchwald, Ze'ev Rosenkranz, Tilman Sauer, József Illy, (eds.); Daniel J. Kennefick, A.J. Kox and Osik Moses (assoc. eds.). Princeton University Press, 2015.
  • 'The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 13. The Berlin Years: January 1922 – March 1923' with Diana Kormos Buchwald, Ze'ev Rosenkranz, Tilman Sauer, József Illy, (eds.); Daniel J. Kennefick, A. J. Kox and Osik Moses (assoc. eds.). Princeton University Press, 2012.
  • 'Hermann Minkowski's 'Space and Time'' (Translation), in: Vesselin Petkov (editor): Minkowski Spacetime: A Hundred Years later. Springer, 2010.
​
Peer-Reviewed Articles
  • `The prediction and interpretation of singularities. From Einstein and Schwarzschild to Penrose and Wheeler’. Forthcoming in Physics in Perspective.  
  • `On Penrose’s Analogy between Curved Spacetime Regions and Optical Lenses’. With Christian Röken and Juliusz Doboszewski. Philosophy of Physics, Volume 2, Issue 1. Open Access, available at https://philosophyofphysics.lse.ac.uk/articles/10.31389/pop.54
  • `Epistemology of Observational Black Hole Astrophysics’. With Juliusz Doboszewski. Forthcoming in Philosophy of Astrophysics, edited by Nora Mills Boyd, Siska De Baerdemaeker, Kevin Heng, and Vera Matarese. Springer, 2023
  • 'Integrating Dark Matter, Modified Gravity, and the Humanities’ with Niels Martens, Miguel Angel Carretero Sahuquillo, Erhard Scholz and Michael Krämer, forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 2022.
  • 'Cartography of the space of theories: an interpretational chart for fields that are both (dark) matter and spacetime’ with Niels Martens, forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics. 
  • 'Dark Matter = Modified Gravity? Scrutinising the spacetime-matter distinction through the modified gravity / dark matter lens’ with Niels Martens, forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics.
  • 'The Equivalence Principle(s)', forthcoming in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics, edited by E. Knox and A. Wilson, Routledge 2018. Preprint at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/17709/.
  • 'General Relativity as a Hybrid theory: The Genesis of Einstein's work on the Problem of Motion', forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics.  Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.09872.
  • 'Two Miracles of General Relativity' with James Read and Harvey Brown. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Volume 46, November 2018, pp. 14-25. Preprint at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/14589/.
  • 'The Metaphysics of Super-Substantivalism'. Nous, Volume 52, Issue 1, pp. 24-46.
  • 'Literal vs Careful Interpretations of Scientific Theories: the Vacuum Approach to the Problem of Motion in General Relativity'. Philosophy of Science, Volume 84, Issue 5, December 2017. Extended preprint at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/12461/.
  • 'Introduction: Towards a Theory of Spacetime Theories', in: Lehmkuhl, Scholz, Schiemann (eds.): Towards a Theory of Spacetime Theories. Einstein Studies, Birkäuser, 2017.
  • 'Einstein, the Reality of Space, and the Action-Reaction Principle' (with Harvey Brown), in The Nature of Reality, ed. Partha Ghose, Routledge, 2017. Preprint at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/9792. 
  • 'Particle Physics and the Higgs discovery: Philosophical Perspectives' (with Simon Friederich), in Studies in History and Philosophy of Physics, Volume 51, August 2015, pp. 69-70. Preprint at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/11750/.
  • 'Why Einstein did not believe that General Relativity geometrizes gravity' in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Volume 46, May 2014, pp. 316-326. The published article is available under the link above as an open access source.
  • 'Time in Spacetimes' in Philosophia Naturalis, Volume 49, No. 2, December 2012.
  • 'Mass-Energy-Momentum. Only there because of Spacetime?' in The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 62, No. 3, 2011, pp. 454-488. Preprint available at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/5137/.
  • 'Super-Substanzialismus in der Philosophie der Raumzeit' in Michael Esfeld (ed.): Philosophie der Physik. Suhrkamp 2011. 
  • 'Matter(s) in Relativity Theory' in Dorato, M., Rédei, M. and Suárez, M. (eds): Philosophical Issues in the Sciences: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Springer, 2010.
  • 'Is spacetime a gravitational field?' in Dennis Dieks: The Ontology of Spacetime II.' Series: Philosophy and Foundations of Physics, Elsevier Science, 2008.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS
  • `Was Wissen wir über das Universum? Wo hat die Physik ihre Grenzen?’ With Bruce Allen. In: Weisheit und Wissenschaft, edited by Peter Nickl, Peter Steiner, Assunta Verrrone; LITVerlag, Berlin, 2022.
  • `Was ist Raum, Zeit – und was Bewegung?’ In: Explodierende Vielfalt. Wie Komplexität entsteht. Springer, 2019, edited by Eberhard Klempt.
  • `Hermann Minkowski‘s ``Space and Time´´(Translation). In: Vesselin Petkov (editor): `Minkowski Spacetime: A Hundred Years later´. Springer, 2010.


Recorded Talks on Youtube            Oxford Mathematics Public Lecture, with Sir Roger Penrose and Melwyn Bragg. 
           Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford.              Festival of Philosophy, Max Planck Society.             Caltech Alumni Association.