Rainer Thomas received his master's degree in mineralogy, his PhD., and his Habilitation at Freiberg University of Mining and Technology (Germany). He worked in the semiconductor industry from 1969 to 1988, where he carried out research on crystal growth by chemical transport reactions, developed polishing technologies for silicon wafers, and performed X-ray studies on crystals using single- and double-crystal topographic techniques and multiple-diffraction measurements. He was head of the X-ray fine structure laboratory for 15 years while in the semiconductor industry. Dr. Thomas began work as a research scientist in 1988 at the Central Institute of Physics of the Earth in Potsdam, and then joined the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam in 1992, where he remained until his retirement in 2007. Throughout his career, Dr. Thomas has studied all aspects of fluid and melt inclusions in minerals and has used Raman microspectrometry for the characterization of inclusions and other geomaterials. He is also recognized for developing a Raman spectroscopic method for measuring trace to major amounts of water in glasses and melt inclusions. A main focus of his research has been the genesis of pegmatites using melt and fluid inclusions. In 2009, he was awarded the Hawley medal from the Mineralogical Association of Canada as co-author of a research article published in the Canadian Journal of Mineralogy. Thomas is author or co-author of more than 80 articles published in impacted SCI journals.
