Anneliese Maier was the daughter of the philosopher Heinrich Maier (1876–1933). She studied
natural sciences and
philosophy from 1923 to 1926 at the universities in
Berlin and
Zurich. In 1930 she finished her dissertation on
Immanuel Kant (
Kants Qualitätskategorien). She then worked for the
Prussian Academy of Sciences. In 1936 she moved to
Rome. There she worked until 1945 at the
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana on the
philosophy of nature. According to
E. J. Dijksterhuis, the path of the influence of
Oresme through James of St. Martinus was found by Maier: "The fourteenth-century treatise
De Latitudinibus formarum which, omitting all the speculative elements, gives a summary of the purely mathematical part of Oresme's own work, was very widely diffused, first in manuscript and later in print, and as
Auctor de latitudinibus the anonymous author became better known than Oresme himself. Through later researches by Miss A. Maier, the identity of this
Auctor has meanwhile been established: the man who ensured the survival of Oresme's methods was an Italian Augustinian hermit, James of St. Martinus, also called James of Naples." In 1951 Maier became a
professor at the
University of Cologne. She became a member of the Academies of Sciences in Mainz (1949), Göttingen (1962) and Munich (1966). In 1966 she received the
George Sarton Medal for her profound studies on the history of natural philosophy in the
Middle Ages. The
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has named a research grant after her, the Anneliese Maier Research Award, which is a "collaboration award to promote the internationalisation of the humanities and social sciences in Germany." ==Selected works==