Christian Koeberl
Christian Koeberl is full professor of geosciences (impact research and planetary geology) at the University of Vienna, Austria, as well as full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and was from 2010 to 2020 director general of the Natural History Museum Vienna. He studied chemistry, physics, and astronomy, obtained his PhD in 1983, and his “habilitation” in the geosciences in 1990. He had visiting scientist appointments at, among others, the Lunar and Planetary Institute and NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, and the Carnegie Institution in Washington, and was visiting professor at, e.g., Dartmouth College (New Hampshire) and the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). His research deals mostly with impact craters, especially geochemical, mineralogical, and petrographic studies, and the early Earth, meteorites, and planetary geology. His publication record includes about 500 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 18 authored or edited books, many of which deal with impact craters and processes; asteroid 15963 is named in his honor “Koeberl”.