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I confess, I was very happy when an email came from Ralph Watzel on Monday, April 14th of this year, shortly before I went home: "Dear colleague Hofmann, in my role as President of the German Geological Society - Geological Association (DGGV), it is a great pleasure for me to be able to inform you that the DGGV would like to award you the Serge von Bubnoff Medal in 2025. With this award, the DGGV would like to recognize your outstanding achievements I would like to congratulate you on this on behalf of the board and advisory board of the DGGV." The presentation should take place during the Geo4Goettingen2025 annual meeting in September. I was really happy – like a little snow king.
As a librarian, I am somewhat familiar with geologists and their work. Awards such as the Leopold von Buch Medal or the Abraham Gottlob Werner Medal bear the names of great founding fathers who should be no stranger to geologists. So does Bubnoff, the Internet is full of data about Bubnoff's Sergius Nikolaevich. In our library, "Bubnoff" brings no fewer than 90 hits.
Serge, born in St. Petersburg in 1888 (died in Berlin in 1957), grew up bilingual. His father was a Russian doctor and his mother was the daughter of a German businessman. The family went to Heidelberg in 1906. The young Bubnoff studied geology in Freiburg (doctorate in 1912). His further career took him from Freiburg to Heidelberg (1914), then to Breslau (1921) and finally to Greifswald (1929). In 1950, when Germany was divided, he became full professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin (GDR).
Bubnoff, honored with numerous prizes, left behind more than 5,000 printed pages; he dedicated 1,603 pages to the "Geology of Europe" (1926 to 1936). He was, not least because of his origins, a bridge builder between East and West. A year after his death, the medal named after him was awarded for the first time in 1958 by the then Society for Geological Sciences in the GDR.
There is no question that Bubnoff was one of the great geologists, a "trailblazer of geosciences", to quote a book title by Marianne and Martin Meschede (mother and son), where information about him can be found on page 58. Its name is also considered a measure of the speed of sedimentation, so one bub (B) corresponds to one millimeter of sediment per 1000 years. In everyday life this would be more of a measure of slowness.
The square medal is - according to the DGGV website - "awarded to people who have made particular achievements in conveying complex geoscientific contexts and fundamentals as well as the public presentation of geosciences." The 2024 award winner, Siegfried Lächelt (born in 1931), met Bubnoff as a student in 1956. I, born in 1964, am far from that! Leopold Weber (born 1948), raw materials geologist and deposit expert, the first Austrian winner of the medal in question (2006) was also too young to meet Bubnoff in person. Back to the now!
A look at the reasons for the Serge von Bubnoff Medal from 2025: "Mag. Thomas Hofmann is a well-known science mediator who has been active as a journalist for over 30 years and focuses on communicating geosciences to the general public." And further in the text accompanying the medal: "He is also an innovative communicator who knows how to vividly represent the lives and everyday lives of researchers in all their facets." Since November 2019, I have been trying to achieve the latter month after month in the Science History blog or - if you prefer something analogue - in the book "Adventure Science" (Böhlau 2020), the 2021 science book in the Natural Science & Technology became.
If you want to know what's currently going on in science, read science pages like these in DER STANDARD. That would be the position of those who are curious and follow with keen interest the direction in which research is going. On the other hand, there are researchers who partly want to present their work out of their own conviction and partly are obliged to do so. Anyone who works in EU-funded research projects must take PR or outreach, as it is often called, into account when applying.
Basically, it's about showing what is being done with public money and where the benefits for the general public lie. Justification of scientific work that is understandable to the general public is also helpful in acquiring new research funding. The focus here is always on the results: What came out? Who does it serve? What is the benefit and progress?
However, the researcher is hardly noticed and largely in the background. I have been devoting myself to this aspect in the history of science since November 2019. The researcher is my central concern. How were they? What have they experienced? What ups and downs, adventures and dangers did they have to endure in order to break new ground - often in the truest sense of the word? For me it's about the people involved, about the making of, rather than about the results, which should never be missing, or as it says in the introduction to the blog: "Unknown aspects, interdisciplinary connections and human fate characterize the well-researched contributions."
This approach was also the reason why the DGGV awarded the Serge von Bubnoff Medal: "He [Hofmann] is also an innovative communicator who knows how to vividly represent the lives and everyday lives of researchers in all their facets. Through his work, he has inspired a broad audience for geosciences and is therefore an important mediator of scientific content and research results."
The honors of the German geological community, i.e. the DGGV, take place as part of the respective annual conferences. This year it was in Göttingen and the motto was: “Geo4Göttingen – Geo4Chance – Earth, Life, Climate, Resources, Materials”. I was happy to accept the invitation. Of course I gave a lecture, that's appropriate. I spoke about “Successful Science Communication as a Human Dimension”.
In Göttingen I met familiar faces, including Kristine Asch from the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), the German equivalent of GeoSphere Austria. I've known her for over 20 years, hence her personal question: "How much longer do you have to retire?" I notice these questions, this time from Kristine's mouth, increasing as soon as you've passed your 60s. “Three and a half years,” was my answer. Kristine, to whom we owe the work of the century, the "Geological Map of Europe" (1:5 million, 2005), is a networker par excellence. "Thomas, you're getting a prize? I'll be here to cheer you on!"
The award ceremony was carried out by Martin Meschede (Past President of the DGGV). Together with Wolfgang Frisch, he is the author of one of the books on plate tectonics, which was presented on September 19th in the blog: Exquisite Knowledge.
How right the German poet Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), to whom we owe the famous saying, "When someone goes on a journey, he can tell something," was right. I would never have thought that a ride through the Gobi Desert would not be necessary for such experiences, but that a trip with Deutsche Bahn would suffice. I had planned everything in detail in advance and was convinced that everything - keyword German thoroughness - would work out well.
For the outward journey I booked a sleeping car from Vienna Meidling to Göttingen. The conductor assured me he would wake me up at 5:30 a.m. and bring breakfast. To be on the safe side, I also set my alarm, which reliably went off at 5:45 a.m. At first I was annoyed with the conductor because he had "forgotten" me. Anyway, I got off the train when it stopped at a station at 6am. I couldn't find a station sign, but - because of the time - I was convinced that I had gotten off in Göttingen. But it was Kassel, one stop before Göttingen. Apparently the night train was so late that it probably didn't arrive in Göttingen until 6:30 a.m. or later. I took it calmly, had a coffee in Kassel and took the next train to Göttingen.
The return journey in the afternoon was disproportionately more adventurous. According to the schedule, it was supposed to start at Göttingen station at 3:02 p.m.; I wanted to arrive in Vienna in the evening of the same day. My plan was: from Göttingen to Nuremberg and then on to Vienna. The time to change was just seven minutes, but there was also a train to Vienna an hour later. I had already factored in a minor delay. But since the train left Göttingen 100 (!) minutes late due to signal box damage, any hope of reaching Vienna on the same day was gone.
To make a long story short: I continued on to Munich and booked a couchette seat on the night train that was supposed to leave at 11:54 p.m. When the train still wasn't there at exactly midnight and then disappeared from the display board, I took - at the last second - the local train to Salzburg that was waiting on the neighboring track at 00:02 a.m. I finally reached Vienna Meidling with a local Railjet shortly after six o'clock the next day. There was no question of being rested or even sleeping well. (Thomas Hofmann, October 24, 2025)