Born 1968 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Diploma in Geology at the University of Karlsruhe (1992); PhD in Geosciences at the University of Kiel (1995). Stays as Postdoctoral Research Associate at Geomar, Center for Marine Geosciences, Kiel, Germany (until 1996) and in the Department of Oceanography at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (until 1997). Postdoctoral Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, USA and Research Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, USA (1997-1998). Return to Europe as 'Oberassistent' at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland (2000-2002) and Habilitation in Earth Sciences at the ETH Zürich (2002). Professor at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam and the University of Potsdam, Germany (2003-2007). From 2007 on Ordinary Professor for Climate Geology at the ETH Zürich. Director of the Climate Geochemistry Department and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry since 2015. He was president of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina from 2020 to 2025.