The German Mineralogical Society awards the Abraham Gottlob Werner Silver Medal to Professor Dr. Hans-Rudolf Wenk in recognition of his extensive research on rock deformation and the defect analysis of minerals. His research activities range from crystal structure determination and the analysis of crystal defects to experimental and natural rock deformation and field studies. His main research focus is the texture analysis of rocks, a field in which he has worked successfully for decades using a variety of methods, including X-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction, synchrotron radiation, and electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), while also advancing the field through innovative methodological developments. As early as 1963, he described a newly developed texture X-ray camera in the Schweizerische Mineralogische und Petrographische Mitteilungen. A more recent example of an instrumental innovation involving Hans-Rudolf Wenk is the neutron diffractometer HIPPO (High Pressure Preferred Orientation), installed in 2003 at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, which enables the in situ observation of texture development. Further major contributions include the development of widely used software packages for texture analysis, such as MAUD and BEARTEX. Hans-Rudolf Wenk has published six books and approximately 400 scientific papers. These include fundamental contributions on topics such as the deformation of carbonates, the textural memory of quartzites, the formation of pseudotachylites, the anisotropy of the nickel–iron inner core of the Earth, and the deformation behavior of post-perovskite. Through this body of work, Hans-Rudolf Wenk has demonstrated how the textures of rocks can provide fundamental insights into large-scale geological processes such as mantle convection and mountain building.