Peter Herzig

Professor Peter Herzig has been Director and CEO of the former Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences IFM-GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany, since 2004. On January 1, 2012 he became the Executive Director of GEOMAR – Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel. Professor Herzig also serves as Maritime Coordinator of the Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein and was appointed Maritime Ambassador of the European Union in 2007.

Professor Herzig is an economic geologist by training, and has participated in numerous oceanographic expeditions in all the oceans, several as Chief Scientist. He also sailed as scientist and Chief Scientist for the Ocean Drilling Program. Peter Herzig received his PhD in Geology from the Aachen University of Technology in 1986. Following an Alexander von Humboldt Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto, he obtained a Research Associate and Assistant Professorship at Aachen University and was a Visiting Professor at the Geological Survey of Canada. From 1993 to 2003, Peter Herzig was Full Professor and Chair of Economic Geology and Petrology as well as Head of the Leibniz Laboratory for Applied Marine Research at Freiberg University of Mining and Technology in Germany. He served as Dean of the Faculty for Geosciences, Geo-Engineering and Mining from 1997 to 1999. Following a Visiting Professorship at Southampton Oceanography Centre in the UK, Peter Herzig became Full Professor at the University of Kiel in 2003.

Peter Herzig is a member of a number of national and international boards and committees and was a Senator of the German Science Foundation DFG from 2005 to 2011. Professor Herzig is currently President of the international “Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean,” and a member of the advisory boards of the National Oceanography Centre in the UK and the Halifax Marine Research Institute in Canada. In 2000, Professor Herzig received the prestigious Leibniz Award of the German Science Foundation for his research on seafloor hydrothermal systems and associated metal deposits. He is a member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering Acatech and the Saxonian Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. In 2010 he was awarded the Medal of Merit of the Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein and appointed to the Fore-sight Committee of Schleswig-Holstein chaired by the Prime Minister.

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