Joachim Maier is director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart (Germany) and heads the Physical Chemistry department. J. Maier studied chemistry is Saarbrücken, made his Masters and PhD in Physical Chemistry there. He received his habilitation degree at the University of Tübingen. From 1988 to 1991 he was responsible for the activities on functional ceramics at the MPI for Metals Research in Stuttgart, and from 1988 to 1996 (as a Foreign Faculty Member) he was teaching defect chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1991 he was appointed Scientific Member of the Max-Planck-Society, director at the MPI for Solid State Research and Honorary Professor at the University of Stuttgart.

J. Maier has authored/co-authored about 500 scientific papers in refereed journals, 12 patents in the field of physical chemistry and electrochemistry of the solid state. His major research field is ion transport in solids. He is also author or editor of several books and has organized various international conferences on these subjects. Under this headline, research is devoted to electrochemistry, equilibrium and non-equilibrium of thermodynamics of charge carriers and chemical kinetics of solid state processes (Solid State Ionics, Defect Chemistry, Nanoionics).

He was awarded both the PhD award fellowship and the Lecturer award fellowship of the German Chemical society, the E.-Martin-Prize of the University of Saarbrücken and the Norman Hackerman Award of the Electrochemical Society. He is co-recipient of the 2002, 2004 and 2005 Edward C. Henry Award and of the 2005 Ross Coffin Purdy Award of the American Ceramic Society. He is a member of the German Academy of Sciences and Literature (Mainz), member of the Academia Europaea, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Honorary Member of the National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana. He was Visiting Professor at the M.I.T. and TU Graz; he was appointed as Herbert-Johnson-Award lecturer (Cornell University), Richard-Willstätter lecturer of the GDCh (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Seidman lecturer (Technion). He also gave the Wilhelm-Jost lecture series of the Deutsche Bunsen-Gesellschaft.

Joachim Maier is Editor-in-Chief of Solid State Ionics and on the Board of various scientific journals (Adv. Funct. Mater., J. Electroceramics, J. Solid State Electrochem., Materials Science Foundation, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., Trends in Physical Chemistry). He served as officer on councils of various societies and organizations (ISE, ISSI, DBG, GDCh, MPG, BDI, IAEA, FZ Jülich among others); he was chairman of the Solid State Chemistry Division of GDCh, chairman of the New Topics Committee (International Society of Electrochemistry) and Titular member of the IUPAC Physical and Biophysical Chemistry Division Committee.