Dirk Trautmann, born 1943 in Dresden, studied physics at the University of Basel and received the Ph. D. in theoretical physics in 1969 (Prof. K. Alder). As a postdoc at the Institute for Physics in Basel he obtained the 'Habilitation' in 1975. From 1975 to 1998 he visited different research centers for longer stays. e.g. at the Niels-Bohr Institute (Copenhagen-Denmark), University of Indiana (Bloomington-USA), Polytechnic Institute of New York (Brooklyn-USA), University of Cape Town (South Africa), Manne-Siegbahn-Institute (Stockholm-Sweden) and Universidad Nacional (Guernavaca-Mexico)). In 1998 he was beeing appointed associate professor for theoretical physics at the Department of Physics in Basel. Since 2010 he is emeritus professor.

• Ion-atom collisions, especially the excitation and ionization of atoms and the development of different reaction models for such reactions.
• Excitation and breakup of pionium in relativistic collisions with atoms.
• Theoretical investigation of the Coulomb excitation of halo nuclei, produced at rare isotope facilities.
• Study of electromagnetic processes in ultraperipheral collisions of relativistic heavy ions.
• Investigation of exclusive electron scattering i.e. radiative corrections and Coulomb corrections.
• Relativistic astrophysics in connection with general relativistic effects.

Dirk Trautmann has published ca. 250 articles in refereed journals; some few and new articles are listed below:

1. I. Sick and D. Trautmann, On the rms-radius of the deuteron, Nucl. Phys. A637, 559-575 (1998).
2. G. Baur, K. Hencken and D. Trautmann, Photon-photon physics in very peripheral collisions of relativistic heavy ions, J. Phys. G.24, 1657-1691 Topical review (1998).
3. T. A. Heim, K. Hencken, D. Trautmann and G. Baur, Coherent and incoherent atomic scattering: formalism and application to pionium interacting with matter, J. Phys. B33, 3583-3604 (2000).
4. H. Meier, Z. Halabuka, K. Hencken, D. Trautmann and D. Trautmann, Bound-free electron-positron pair production in relativistic heavy ion collisions, Phys. Rev. A63, 032713 (2001).
5. G. Baur, K. Hencken, D. Trautmann, S. Sadovsky and Y. Kharlov, Coherent γγ and γA interactions in very peripheral collisions at relativistic hadron colliders, Phys. Rep. 364, 359-450 (2002).
6. G. Baur, K. Hencken and D. Trautmann, Electromagnetic dissociation as a tool for nuclear structure and astrophysics, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 51, 487-564 (2003).
7. K. Hencken, G. Baur and D. Trautmann, Electron-positron pair production in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions, Phys. Rep. 453 (2007), 1-27.
8. T. Zingg, A. Aste and D. Trautmann, Just dust: about the (in)applicability of rotating dust solutions as realistic galaxy models, Adv. Studies Theor. Phys. 1 (2007), 409-432.