is professor of Science Studies at ETH Zurich and member of »Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung«, the Leopoldina, and of »Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen«. He studied Medicine and Philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin, where he also worked as a neurophysiologist after graduating. He was a visiting scholar at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London before working at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Science in Lübeck, at the Institute for the History of Medicine in Göttingen, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He was visiting professor at the universities of Salzburg, Tel Aviv, Frankfurt Main and Cologne. He is also awarded winner of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Science and of the »Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung«. He was awarded the 2008 Sigmund Freud prize for his scientific prose writing.
is full professor of Modern and Swiss History at the Research Unit for Social and Economic History at the University of Zurich and founding member of the collaborate research centre »Geschichte des Wissens« (University of Zurich and ETH Zurich). In his research he focuses on the history of knowledge, the history of the Cold War, theories of the science of history, the history of the city, and the history of body narratives and sexuality.