​Jack Middelburg was trained as a biogeologist/geochemist and worked from 1992-2009 at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. Since 2009 he holds the geochemistry chair at Utrecht University. He has a very wide scientific interest, from inorganic geochemistry via biogeochemistry to ecology, from elemental-cycles oriented to organisms-oriented studies, from weathering of rocks to deep-sea pore-waters, from laboratory studies and field observations to numerical modelling, from global scale down to nanometer scale, and through the use of reductionistic as well as holistic and explorative approaches. He has been elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and is recipient of various awards, including ASLO's Hutchinsons award in 2016 and the EGU's Vernadsky award in 2017.