Joseph P. Heremans

Joseph P. Heremans, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and brother, as well as Professor at The Ohio State University passed away on Tuesday November 18, 2025 in Columbus, Ohio, at the age of 72.

Joseph was a distinguished condensed-matter experimental physicist whose work transformed how we understand the transport of heat, charge, and spin in solids. At Ohio State, he held appointments in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Physics, where he was known not only for groundbreaking research but also for his generous mentoring of students and colleagues.  

Joseph Pierre Heremans was born in Belgium in the town of Leuven, on January 8th, 1953, to Felix Joseph Heremans (1927-1975) and Marie Thérèse Clara Bracke (1927-2011).  As the eldest of five siblings, Joseph (Jos) enjoyed many family activities such as traveling to Switzerland, Austria, Russia, New York, and playing chamber music with his father. Jos married Claire Pierre Mali in 1978, and together had two children, Hilde Anne Heremans and Joseph Paul Heremans. From an early age, he was endlessly fascinated by how things worked, finding joy in cars, trains, airplanes, and anything mechanical, and loved sharing his passion with his siblings, children, and grandchildren.

Jos obtained his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1975 and his PhD in applied physics in 1978 with Prof. Jean-Paul Issi at University of Louvain. Early in his career, he held research fellowships and visiting scientist positions including at the Oersted Institute of the University of Copenhagen, where he worked under the direction of Prof. Ole P. Hansen, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked under the direction of Prof. Mildred Dresselhaus, and at the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University of Tokyo, where he worked under the direction of Prof. Seiichi Tanuma. These experiences shaped his lifelong, international approach to science.  

He emigrated from his native Belgium with his wife and two children in 1984 to southeast Michigan.  Before joining Ohio State, Jos spent more than two decades in industrial research at General Motors Research Laboratories (1984-1998) and Delphi Research Laboratories (1999-2005), where his discoveries in thermoelectric materials and magnetoresistance led to practical devices, including magnetic position sensors now used in automotive applications. In 2005, he came to The Ohio State University as Ohio Eminent Scholar, and in the years that followed, he built a world-class research program exploring thermoelectrics, spin caloritronics, polarization caloritronics, and topological and quantum materials.  

Throughout his career, Jos authored more than 250 scientific publications, advised more than 30 students and postdocs, held dozens of patents, and helped open new subfields in thermoelectricity and spin-based heat transport. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1987) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011), and in 2013 he was inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Engineering for “discoveries in thermal energy transfer and conversion to electricity and for commercial devices employed in automobiles.” In 2024 he was elected as member of the National Academy of Inventors. He was the recipient of several prestigious national research awards including being named to the 2024 class of the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship. At Ohio State, he received numerous honors, including the Clara M. and Peter L. Scott Award for Excellence in Engineering Education, multiple Lumley research awards, the Innovators Award, and the Inventor of the Year Award.  

Yet for all of these achievements, those who loved Jos will remember him most for his insatiable curiosity and humor. He welcomed students, postdocs, and colleagues from around the world into his lab and his life, often becoming a mentor, advocate, and friend long after formal roles had ended. At home, he was a devoted partner, a supportive father who always had a story and a mischievous smile, someone who could move easily from explaining a subtle physical effect to laughing over a family joke at the dinner table. He loved classical music, photography, hiking in the Alps, and a deep interest in reading books on history, science, and technology.

Jos is survived by his beloved wife of 47 years, Claire P. Mali, and his two children and their families: Hilde and her husband Albert of Farmington Hill, Michigan; and Joseph and his wife Fatima Lace of Chicago, Illinois.  He is also survived by two grandchildren, Adelio and Sophia; and his four siblings, Annie, Paul, Jean, and Catherine, and many nieces and nephews

A memorial gathering will take place at Egan-Ryan Northwest (4661 Kenny Rd.) on November 24th, 2025, from 4-7 pm where a memorial service will begin at 7 pm. Please see egan-ryan.com for more information.

A burial will be held in southeast Michigan on December 12th, 2025. A Celebration of Life will be held in Belgium at a later date. The family kindly requests that in lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to causes that advance the curiosity of young scientific minds in Jos’ memory such as The Henry Ford Museum (https://giving.thehenryford.org/) or the Museum of Science and Industry (https://www.griffinmsi.org/support).

Jos’ life embodied the best of science: rigor, imagination, integrity, and collaboration. His family, friends, and colleagues take comfort in knowing that the ideas he set in motion—and the people he inspired—will continue his work for many years to come.