Victor Moritz Goldschmidt advanced science by setting aside conventional approaches and opening up entirely new fields of research. As in Goldschmidt's time, much of today's research focuses on refining existing models or confirming established knowledge with additional data. While these results are often well received within our own scientific community, they too rarely have a broader impact across disciplinary boundaries.
We see Daniel Herwartz (University of Cologne) as following in Victor Moritz Goldschmidt's footsteps in the best sense of the word, and we are therefore delighted that he has been awarded this year's Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Prize of the DMG. He is constantly searching for unconventional approaches, developing remarkably innovative ideas while never losing sight of the importance of communicating scientific discoveries through high-quality publications. Daniel Herwartz studied geology at the University of Bonn, where he completed his diploma in 2007 with a thesis on geochronological investigations—primarily using the Lu–Hf isotope system—of eclogites. In his doctoral dissertation, completed in 2011, he explored the applications of the Lu–Hf isotope system and rare earth elements across an exceptionally broad range of materials, from fossil bones to eclogites. Following his PhD, he turned his attention as a postdoctoral researcher to stable isotope geochemistry, focusing particularly on ^17O.
More recently, the incorporation of ^17O into oxygen isotope geochemistry has given rise to an entirely new research field, as reflected in the recently published Volume 86 of the Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry series, to which Daniel Herwartz contributed a highly regarded chapter.
Daniel Herwartz's publication record already includes 30 papers (with another published in PNAS at the end of May), eleven of them as first author. His research spans an exceptionally broad range of topics—from fossil bones to eclogites, and from the Archean to modern geological processes. His work has appeared in leading journals including Science, Nature Geoscience, PNAS, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, and Earth and Planetary Science Letters, reaching a wide international audience. Daniel Herwartz successfully addresses some of the most fundamental questions in geochemistry and has already gained international recognition.
During our collaboration with Daniel Herwartz in Göttingen, we were particularly impressed by his focused approach to research, his creativity, and the relaxed and inspiring working atmosphere that always surrounds him. Daniel Herwartz possesses exceptional scientific talent and is a thoroughly deserving recipient of the Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Prize. We warmly congratulate both him and the German Mineralogical Society on this award.
— Andreas Pack & Jochen Hoefs · Göttingen
