According to the latest “Highly Cited Researchers” citation ranking, geochemist Prof. Dr. Thorsten Dittmar is one of the world's most cited scientists. The ranking includes a total of over 6,800 scientists from 21 research fields, around 330 of them from Germany. With his publications in various scientific fields, Dittmar is represented in the “Cross-Field” category and is included in this ranking for the fourth time.

The “Highly Cited Researchers” ranking list, published by Clarivate Analytics, is based on the “Web of Science” citation database. According to Clarivate, “Highly Cited Researchers” have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their fields of research. The selected researchers have authored multiple Highly Cited Papers, which rank in the top 1% by citations for their fields and publication year in the “Web of Science” over the past decade.

Dittmar has been head of the Marine Geochemistry research group at the ICBM in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (ICBM-MPI Bridge Group) since 2013. The group focuses on dissolved organic matter in the sea. Hundreds of thousands of different organic molecules are dissolved in every liter of seawater. Many of these compounds have accumulated in seawater over thousands of years and form one of the largest reservoirs of reduced carbon on the Earth's surface. Since even small changes in this reservoir can have a major impact on atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, dissolved organic matter in the ocean may play an important role in regulating the global climate. The behavior of dissolved organic matter is still largely unknown. An essential step towards a better understanding is the identification of its molecular composition. The Marine Geochemistry research group uses state-of-the-art analytical methods to gain new insights into the origin and history of dissolved organic matter.