Gerald H. Haug life and biography

Gerald Haug is a paleoclimatologist, marine geologist and paleoceanographer. He studies the development of the Earth climate over thousands to millions of years. He analyses sediment cores from the sea floor and lakes, amongst several other climate archives

Gerald H. Haug holds a full professorship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Switzerland) since 2007. In March 2020, he became the new President of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

In the present Coronavirus crisis, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina advises the government in their measures to fight the spread of the virus and its damages. Advice given to the government led to the lockdowns and restrictions on public life put in place across Germany in March to slow the spread of COVID-19. The recommendation to focus on testing capacity has seen Germany test over 1.5 million people by April 12.

Academic and Professional Career:

since 2020 President of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – German
National Academy of Sciences, Halle (Saale)
since 2015 Ordinary Professor for Climate Geochemistry, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Switzerland
since 2015 Director, Dept. Climate Geochemistry, Max-Planck-Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany
2007 - 2015 Ordinary Professor for Climate Geology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
2003 - 2007 Professor (C4), University of Potsdam and Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam (GFZ), Germany
2002 Habilitation in Geosciences, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
2000 - 2002 Oberassistent, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
1998 - 1999 Research Assistant Professor, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften Leopoldina
1997 - 1998 Postdoctoral Guest Investigator, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
Massachusetts, USA
1996 - 1997 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Oceanography, University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, Canada
1995 - 1996 Postdoctoral Research Associate, GEOMAR, Center for Marine Geosciences, Kiel, Germany
1995 Ph.D. at the Geological Institute, University of Kiel, Germany
1992 Diploma in Geology, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
1987 - 1992 Diploma student in Geology at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany

Current functions in scientific committees

Chair of the Science Advisory Board of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and member of the

Governance Board

Chair of the Science Advisory Board of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Member of the Governance Board of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Member of the Science Commission of Lower Saxony
Member of the Science Advisory Board of the Swiss Polar Institute
Member of the Science Advisory Board of the Netherland Earth System Science Center (NESSC)
Member of the Science Advisory Board of the Werner Siemens Foundation


Honours and Awarded Memberships

since 2018 Member of the Mainz Academy of Science and Literature
since 2012 Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
2010 Rössler-Prize, ETH Zurich
since 2008 Member of the Academia Europaea
2007 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, German Research Foundation (DFG)
2001 Albert Maucher Prize, German Research Foundation (DFG)

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