Rudolf K. Thauer (born October 5, 1939) is a biologist and a retired professor of microbiology and heads the Emeritus group at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg.
[1] Thauer taught in the faculty of Biology at the University of Marburg for about 15 years and is known primarily for his work on the biochemistry of methanogens.
[2] He received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 1986, among numerous other honours including honorary doctorates from ETH Zurich, University of Waterloo[3] and the University of Freiberg.
[1] In 1991 he became founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg.
A novel genus of betaproteobacteria was named Thauera in his honour.