Based on a decision of the Executive Committee (Statutes, Article 7), ICOHTEC has conferred Honorary Membership to Hans-Joachim Braun (Hamburg, Germany) and James Williams (Punta Gorda, Florida). This was done to honour their impressive academic careers and to thank both past presidents of ICOHTEC for their absolutely outstanding contributions to the development of our society. To the best of our knowledge, they are the first honorary members of ICOHTEC.
Hans-Joachim Braun
Hans-Joachim Braun received his doctorate in 1971 from the University of Bochum, where he was a research assistant. He habilitated in 1979. From 1982 until his retirement in 2008, Braun held the Chair of Modern Social, Economic and Technological History at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg. He has done research and taught at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Braun’s research interests include technological innovation, technology transfer, failed innovation, and the relationship between technology and music in the 20th century. His most important contributions have been on creativity, comparing technical and artistic creativity. Braun has analysed invention and construction processes in technology and composition processes in music, and he has studied the scientific and technological development of football tactics.
He is the author of numerous books and articles and is known for his books in English, such as “The German Economy in the Twentieth Century”, “I Sing the Body Electric: Music and Technology in the 20th Century” (ed.) and “Creativity: Technology and Music”, with Susan Schmidt Horning.
Braun was and is a member of the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, he was a keyperson in founding of ICOHTEC’s journal ICON, and is a member of ICON’s editorial board, an officer of the Society for the History of Technology, SHOT, Secretary General and President of the International Committee for the History of Technology, ICOHTEC, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Georg Agricola Society.
James Williams
James Williams received a doctorate in Public History and the history of technology from U.C. Santa Barbara in 1984. He taught at two community colleges in California from 1971 to 2008 and at Stetson University (Florida) from 2014-2015. He was executive director of the California History Center & Foundation from 1978 to 2002 and worked during these years as a public historian in cultural resources management, historic preservation, and litigation support.
A long-time member of ICOHTEC, he served on the board in the 1990s, as vice president from 2001-2008, as president from 2008-2011, and as editor of ICON from 2011-2015. He was co-founder and co-chair of Envirotech from 2000-2004, served as Treasurer of the Society for the History of Technology from 1992-2000, on the Board of Directors of the National Council on Public History from 1988-1991, and as president and later executive secretary of the California Council for the Promotion of History from 1982 to 1994.
James Williams’s primary field of interest is the historical relationship between people, technology, and the environment. He published Energy and the Making of Modern California (1997) as well as numerous articles. His “Understanding the Place of Humans in Nature” in Illusory Boundary: Environment and Technology in History (2010) has been widely cited.
Last but not least, Hans Braun (trumpet) and Jim Williams (piano), together with Susan Schmidt Horning (vocals and guitar), Jim Kraft (guitar), and Tony Stranges (vibraphone), founded the ICOHTEC Jazz Band Email-Special in 1996 at a Budapest Jazz Café. The ICOHTEC Jazz Nights became fantastic highlights of our symposia. Thanks to these events, technology and music became a topic of research and practice. Many colleagues joined the band and contributed to the inspiring atmosphere of ICOHTEC.