The Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Prize recognizes outstanding scientific achievements by early-career researchers. At the annual meeting in Tübingen, the prize was awarded to Hella Wittmann-Oelze (GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam) for her fundamental contributions to the field of cosmogenic nuclide geochemistry.

Hella Wittmann-Oelze was the first to demonstrate, using cosmogenic nuclides in fluvial sediments, that the uplift of the Swiss Central Alps determined by geodetic methods is a consequence of erosion. Her work revealed a strong correlation between uplift and erosion over a wide range of erosion rates. She also successfully extended the application of the in situ cosmogenic nuclide method to large sedimentary basins such as the Amazon Basin. Using this approach, she quantified both modern and past sediment fluxes of the Amazon River and its tributaries, demonstrating that virtually all sediment produced in the Andes is ultimately transported by the Amazon into the Atlantic Ocean.

Her findings showed that the Amazon Basin does not function as a long-term sediment sink, despite containing the world's largest floodplain. Instead, it acts as a large natural "shock absorber," buffering variations in sediment transport while maintaining a remarkably constant sediment export over different climatic periods throughout the Holocene.

Through these pioneering studies, Hella Wittmann-Oelze demonstrated the enormous potential of the in situ cosmogenic nuclide method for reconstructing both modern and past sediment fluxes from terrestrial and marine archives and for investigating fluid–rock interactions.