Born in 1948, Dieter Hoffmann received his Diploma in physics in 1971; he became Dr. phil. in 1976 and Dr. habil. (History of Science) in 1989 at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He is currently research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and Privatdozent at the Humboldt-Universität. Hoffmann has published extensively on the history of physics in the 19th and 20th centuries, in particular the institutional history of quantum theory and modern metrology as well as the history of science in the GDR. In 1993 he published a German edition of the Farm Hall Papers.