Rolf Tippkötter

Rolf Tippkötter (born January 30, 1946 in Hanover ) is a German soil scientist . He taught at the Leibniz University in Hanover , the Ruhr University Bochum and at the University of Bremen . His main research interests are the dynamics, genesis, classification, distribution and ecological evaluation of soil in Germany and China.

Life path

Rolf Tippkötter grew up in Hanover and finished his first school education in 1963 at the Stresemannschule Hanover with the secondary school leaving certificate. This was followed by an apprenticeship as a color lithographer at Schmalbach AG (today Silgan White Cap) and a job in this profession at the large printing company Fehling. In 1967 he belonged to the first class of the Hanover College . After graduating from high school in 1969, he began studying geography, geology and soil science at the Leibniz University of Hanover , which he completed in 1974 with a geo-ecological diploma thesis. His teachers were Horst Mensching , Hartmut Leser , Paul Schachtschabel and Prof. Hartge. During this time he became interested in soil science. From 1971 he worked first as a student assistant and later as a research assistant at the Institute for Soil Science at the University of Hanover under Prof. Graf von Reichenbach, where he received his doctorate summa cum laude in 1979 on a soil genetic topic on black earth colluvia . His time as a university assistant at the University of Hanover was interrupted by a two-year research stay (1984–1986) in the Department of Soil Microbiology of the Macaulay Institute for Soil Research (now The Macaulay Land Use Research Institute) in Aberdeen, Scotland. After his return he completed his habilitation in 1989 with a paper on the properties of microaggregates in soils. His work as a private lecturer and apl. Professor at the University of Hanover, he interrupted for two years as a professor of soil science at the Ruhr University in Bochum and one year as head of the microscopy department at the Federal Research Institute for Agriculture in Braunschweig (today the Julius Kühn Institute - Federal Research Institute for Cultivated Plants). Since 1995, first as a lecturer and since 1997 as a university professor for geoecology, Rolf Tippkötter has headed the Institute for Soil Science at the University of Bremen , which he founded and built up together with the deputy director Heidi Taubner.

Research services

His many years of research have developed from the broad field of soil genesis through micromorphology to molecular soil microbiology. Rolf Tippkötter developed the term micropedology for the combination of microscopic and submicroscopic approaches with the methods of molecular microbiology. His achievement is that he takes a holistic view of soils and their chemical and physical properties, but searches for the causes of many processes equally on the microscopic scale. Together with the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, at the beginning of this century he developed methods for soil science that are internationally recognized. For many years, Tippkötter has not only dealt with the molecular biological detection of bacteria, archaea and fungi in the soil, but also as the only one with the spatial distribution of these microorganisms in the soil. For the first time, he established the spatial application of molecular biological methods (e.g. FISH , CARD-FISH) in the soil in order to obtain functional conclusions with the help of microbial DNA and RNA based on the knowledge of the respective soil physical and chemical properties of the habitats Provide information on the optimization of the soil potential (nutrients) or on hazard potentials (e.g. production of carbon dioxide and methane in the soil). This work is carried out with international cooperation, whereby Chinese partners (Nanjing Agriculture University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, HITAR) must be named. There are also partnerships with the USA, Great Britain, Finland and Australia.

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personal data
SURNAME	Tippkötter, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German soil scientist
DATE OF BIRTH	January 30, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hanover