Alfred Kröner

After 18 months of military service in Germany he continued his studies as a Ph.D. student in the Precambrian Research Unit, University of Cape Town, South Africa, beginning in 1966; he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1968.

After his retirement from U. Mainz, he accepted an invitation to start a long-term relationship with the SHRIMP Centre of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (CAGS) in Beijing, where he spent six months every year.

From there, he was able to travel the world to study Precambrian rocks and then bring these samples back to CAGS, where he was able to obtain robust U-Pb zircon ages.

The American Journal of Science, published by Yale University, in dedicating a special issue to him on his 60th birthday,[2] said that it was celebrated with a symposium in Mainz.

After this, he expanded his activities over several continents as a truly cosmopolitan geoscientist of overwhelming efficiency, recognized and appreciated worldwide in the Geoscience community.