Marine chemist Helmuth Thomas appointed

Prof. Dr. Helmuth Thomas has been appointed to the joint professorship for Marine Alkalinity of the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) at the University of Oldenburg and the Helmholtz Centre Hereon in Geesthacht. He is also director of the Helmholtz Centre Hereon's Institute of Carbon Cycles.

Thomas studied chemistry in Düsseldorf and Kiel. While completing his PhD at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde he measured atmospheric carbon dioxide uptake in the Baltic Sea for the first time. After a period of post-doctoral research at the University of Hamburg, he moved to the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research on the island of Texel, where he conducted research from 1998 to 2004. He then took a post as an associate professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax (Canada), and was made a full professor there in 2012. In 2019, Thomas returned to Germany and established the Alkalinity working group at the Helmholtz Centre Hereon (formerly the Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht). His research focuses on chemical processes such as marine carbon cycles, particularly in marginal seas such as the North Sea, the Baltic Sea or the Arctic Ocean.