From the laudation:

“Through his investigations of the mechanisms of water solubility in model systems, Dr. Nowak has made groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of the properties of natural magmas. By developing a high-temperature measurement cell, he was the first to obtain infrared spectra of silicate melts under realistic experimental conditions, making it possible to determine the in situ speciation of water. (...)

Through his experimental research, Marcus Nowak has fundamentally advanced our understanding of the influence of volatile components in natural magmas on viscosity, phase equilibria, and diffusion, thereby laying the foundation for a quantitative understanding of the dynamics of volcanic eruptions.”