Department of Earth Sciences

…is the science that deals with components of the Earth and its rocks – the minerals. The mineralogical research investigates the chemical and structural composition of the minerals, their physical properties, their formation, and their interaction with diverse surrounding media such as air, water, or fluid. The field of research expands to the mineralogy of the solar system including meteorites and the interstellar cosmos. Hence, modern mineralogists investigate various materials, their formation history, their provenance, and relationship to their living as well as unenlivened environment. Technical mineralogists develop new materials for engineering and work on solving many societal problems such as reuse and recycling of waste materials or energy generation through new and innovative applications.

Petrology

…is the science of the formation, structure, and transformation (metamorphism) of rocks. It is a geoscientific subdiscipline that studies the concurrent occurrence of specific minerals in all preserved geological rocks, which were formed under specific physical and chemical conditions. In cooperation with mineralogy, geochemistry, geology, and geophysics the petrologists interpret rock-forming processes in a geodynamic context. Petrology allows insights into the dynamics of our planet: the formation of oceans, the uplift of mountain chains, the processes during volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts and the causes of earthquakes.