Christoph Helmut Keitel (born 30 July 1965 in Lübeck, Germany) is a German physicist, presently a director of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg and an honorary professor at the University of Heidelberg.
Keitel studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of Hannover and Physics at the University of Munich, Germany, where he graduated in 1990. As a Ph. D. student he worked with Prof. Dr. G. Süssmann, mainly supervised by Prof. Marlan O. Scully and Prof. L. M. Narducci.
After several years of research in New Mexico, USA and at Imperial College, London, he worked as a Marie Curie fellow at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
In 1998 he became a SFB junior research group leader at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
In the year 2000 he obtained the degree of a lecturer and the venia legendi at the University of Freiburg with his post-doctoral thesis on Atomic Systems in Intense Laser Fields.
After working as a lecturer at the universities of Freiburg and Düsseldorf, he was appointed Director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (in German, Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik) in Heidelberg, Germany, in 2004, whereof he was the Managing Director 2006 to 2008. In 2005 he was awarded an honorary professor degree by the University of Heidelberg.
His main areas of research are theoretical laser-induced quantum dynamics, quantum electrodynamics as well as nuclear and high-energy physics with extremely strong laser fields (see also homepage of the Theory Division of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics).
In 2003 he was awarded the Gustav Hertz Prize by the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (German Physical Society).