In 1988 he received his doctorate from Professor Karl-Heinz Schleifer on the topic "The beta subunit of ATP synthase as a phylogenetic marker in the eubacteria".
[8] Prof. Dr. Rudolf Amann has received numerous scientific awards, including the Bergey's Award of the Bergey's Manual Trust, USA (2004),[9] the Lecturer's Prize of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie (1998)[10] and the Körber European Science Prize of the Körber Foundation (1995).
A current focus of his work is on the interaction of phytoplankton and bacterioplankton, which are often controlled by algal polysaccharides as energy sources for heterotrophic bacteria.
[15] His group has optimized a detection method that can be used to determine the bacterial composition of environmental samples – the so-called fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH).
As a researcher in the field of biodiversity, Rudolf Amann is also committed to an integrative taxonomy that builds a bridge to other disciplines.
Amann calls for a multidisciplinary approach to better understand and classify relationships between genes, organisms and ecosystems with the methods of modern genome research.