Maximilian
Haider

Maximilian Haider is an Austrian physicist. After obtaining his degree at the University of Kiel he moved to Darmstadt to work for his PhD, which he obtained in 1987. Only two years later he joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, where he had carried out the experimental work for his PhD, becoming group leader of the Physical Instrumentation Program; he remains there to this day.

His research interests were focused on developing ways to improve the resolution of transmission electron microscopes. While at EMBL he developed a prototype lens system based on the theoretical work by Harald Rose, and started a collaboration with him and Knut Urban that resulted in the first aberration-corrected TEM images of atomic structures in a lat-tice, with the results published in 1998.

In 1996 Haider co-founded CEOS GmbH in Heidelberg, with the aim of producing aberration correctors commercially. He is still a senior adviser for the company, and since 2008 has also been an honorary professor of physics at the Karlsruhe University of Technology.

He has been awarded a number of prizes for his work, including, jointly with Rose and Urban, the Wolf Prize and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences, and he is an honorary fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society.