Speakers

I was born in 1956 in Kanash, a town about 400 miles east of Moscow.  In 1972 I moved to Moscow, where I studied at the Physical-Technical Institute, receiving my doctorate in 1982.  During my time there me and a colleague, G. V. Chibisov, developed a theory that in an expanding and evolving universe, the present structure on the largest scale is the result of quantum fluctuations in the earliest moments of the universe’s existence.  

I then joined the Institute for Nuclear Research, also in Moscow.  From 1982 to 1991 I served as a researcher there, and then spent a year as a professor. 

After the fall of the Soviet Union, I moved abroad.  From 1992 to 1997 I was a lecturer at ETH Zurich (in English, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology).  In December 1997 I joined the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich as a full professor of physics as well as the head of the Astroparticle Physics Division, posts I hold to this day. 

I am Senior Researcher in the Lichtenberg Group for History and Philosophy of Physics and the Centre of Gravity at Universitat Bonn, Distinguished  Scholar at the Black Hole Initiative (Harvard), and co-PI in the QISS (Quantum Information Structure of Spacetime) international research consortium.

I was trained both as a philosopher and as a theoretical physicist because my interests include not only issues in each discipline separately but, even more, the overlap of the two. My current work in these areas focuses on the intersection of general relativity, quantum field theory and thermodynamics, primarily in the physics of black holes, early-universe singularities, and related gravitational phenomena in the semi-classical regime. In general philosophy of science, I work primarily on the semantics of scientific theories and the structure of our knowledge in science and its epistemology, where I grouse a lot about the inadequacies of the semantic view of theoriesand the field's morbid focus on ontology.

On the purely philosophical side, I spend some time working on the ancient Greeks, just because I love them, and on the history of 20th century analytic philosophy. 

On the purely physics side, I enjoy working on the mathematical foundations of classical mechanics and various problems in classical general relativity, especially constructing more astrophysically realistic models of the interiors of perturbed black holes, and in black hole thermodynamics and early-state cosmology. 

I hold a tenure track Assistant Professorship (RTDb) in Philosophy of Science at the University of Perugia (Italy). Before this, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and a fellow at the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern.  I was also a member of NCCR PlanetS. Before moving to Switzerland, I was a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science of the University of Pittsburgh and a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.  

At the heart of my research lie issues in general philosophy of science, metaphysics of science and in philosophy of physics. I also have interests in history of science and in epistemology.