Aarhus/Bremen. “Professor Jørgensen’s name stands for an international outlook, transdisciplinary approach and scientific excellence in modern environmental research. If we can say today that we have managed to bridge what were formerly serious gaps in our understanding of the great carbon and sulphur cycles of the ocean, this progress can be attributed in large part to Professor Jørgensen’s work. In today’s climate debate and the calculation of climate models, the results of the research conducted by this intellectual heavyweight play a central role.” – With these words Dr.-Ing. E. h. Fritz Brickwedde, Secretary General of the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (DBU), honoured the work of Prof. Dr. Bo Barker Jørgensen, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, recipient of the DBU’s German Environmental Award 2009. The award, with the highest endowment of any European environmental honour, will be presented to the 62-year-old Dane by German Federal President Horst Köhler at a ceremony to be held on 25 October in Augsburg. His share of the award money will be about 160,000 euros.
Brickwedde: "We have to appreciate the importance of microbial processes and their interplay with the carbon cycle of the atmosphere"
Brickwedde recognised the global significance of the work of the Copenhagen-born expert in marine biogeochemistry and microbial ecology. If we are able today to finally appreciate the importance of microbial processes in marine sediments and their interplay with the carbon cycle of the atmosphere, this is “one of the major achievements of the groundbreaking scientific work of Professor Jørgensen.”
Jørgensen discovered microorganisms with biocatalysts that makes methane in the ocean harmless
The basis for this research can be understood by looking at the example of methane, Brickwedde explained. Like carbon dioxide, identified as a “climate killer”, methane is also a greenhouse gas, but one that is even more damaging to the climate. It is generated in huge amounts on the ocean floor when organic material there decomposes, and is usually stored initially in the form of methane hydrate. And it is exactly this methane hydrate that has been attracting increasing attention recently from geologists, climate researchers and biologists. Although methane is continuously formed and in some cases makes its way up to the surface of the ocean floor, no appreciable amounts of methane from the sea end up in the atmosphere. Brickwedde: “If this methane were to enter the atmosphere, it would change the earth’s climate substantially.” We have Jørgensen and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology to thank for the fact that we are able to understand this process today. They discovered unusually ascetic microorganisms equipped with special biocatalysts that manage the incredible feat of rendering the chemically inert methane in the ocean harmless at normal temperatures and without oxygen. Biocatalysts are usually enzymes that accelerate biochemical reactions in organisms.
Brickwedde: "Only with this knowledge can the impact of human intervention in these complex processes be estimated reliably"
Jørgensen’s research has thus advanced our state of knowledge of the earth’s natural protective shield against the dangerous methane produced on the ocean floor. Brickwedde: “This helps people to understand the role played by the ocean in our global climate. And only with this knowledge can the impact of human intervention in these complex geochemical and biochemical processes be estimated reliably.”
Profound and most-quoted scientist worldwide
Jørgensen studied biology and chemistry at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. In the early 1970s he began his pioneering work on the microbial sulphur cycle – investigations he continues to pursue today. Following stations as assistant professor and professor in the Department of Ecology and Genetics at the University of Aarhus, he was appointed founding director of the new Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen in 1992. He is also a professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Bremen and associate professor in the Department of Biology (since 1993), as well as chairman of the Center for Geomicrobiology (since 2007) at the University of Aarhus. Jørgensen is one of the most-quoted scientists worldwide.
Jørgensen has received a host of honours and distinctions
Jørgensen is a member of numerous national and international scientific councils and research organisations (including the Danish Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters). He has received a host of honours and distinctions, among them the Friedman Award (Los Angeles, CA, USA, 1991), the Körber European Science Award (Hamburg, 1995), the Hutchinson Award (ASLO; Savannah, GA, USA, 2004) and the ECI Prize (International Ecology Institute, Germany, 2004). In 2006 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Odense, Denmark. On Jørgensen’s initiative, the Max Planck Society and the Danish National Research Foundation recently set up the Center for Geomicrobiology at the University of Aarhus.
"Trailblazer on our way to understanding microbial accumulation and decomposition process on the ocean floor"
Jørgensen perfectly exemplifies the criterion of interdisciplinarity that is so important to environmental science, and conducts laboratory and field research in equal measure in order to understand the highly complex materials cycles of our ecosystem. Brickwedde: “He is the trailblazer on our way to understanding microbial accumulation and decomposition processes on the ocean floor and in the water layers above it.”
