Antje Boetius

Antje Boetius is a German marine biologist presently serving as professor of geomicrobiology at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, University of Bremen. She received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, with 2.5 million euros in funding, in March 2009 for her study of sea bed microorganisms that affect the global climate. She was the first person to describe anaerobic oxidation of methane, and believes the Earth's earliest life forms may have subsisted on methane in the absence of molecular oxygen. She has also suggested such life forms may be able to reduce the rate of climate change in future. She is one of the laureates of the 2018 Environment Prize Dr Boetius won the Erna Hamburger Prize in 2019.