Prof. (ETHZ) Dr. Gerald Haug is President of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. As one of Germany's model scientists and top political advisors, his voice carries particular weight. Not least because he likes to leave his ivory tower and presents complicated issues in a comprehensible manner. Gerald Haug (*1968) studied geology at the University of Karlsruhe and received his doctorate from the University of Kiel in 1995. He then worked as a scientist at the University of Southern California in the USA. In 2002 he habilitated at the ETH in Zurich and in the following year he became professor at the University of Potsdam and head of the Climate Dynamics and Sediments Department at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. From 2007 to 2015 he was full professor of climate geology at ETH Zurich. Since 2015, Gerald Haug has been Director of the Department of Climate Geochemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and is a scientific member of the Max Planck Society and full Professor of Climate Geochemistry at ETH Zurich. The focus of his research is the reconstruction of historical climate processes and developments by extracting sediment cores from oceans and lakes. Gerald Haug seeks the key to understanding the present in the past. By reconstructing and interpreting former climate changes, he gains insights of high explosiveness for the future of mankind. He is particularly interested in researching the relationship between climate and society. Gerald Haug has been President of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since March 2020. As such, his goals are knowledge integration and a public interest orientation as well as the critical monitoring of the digital revolution in science and society and a more anticipatory science-based consulting. Gerald Haug has received numerous awards for his work. These include the Leibniz Prize in 2007 and the Rössler Prize of ETH Zurich in 2010. He has been a member of the Academia Europaea since 2008, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2012 and a member of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature since 2018. His competence in classifying and explaining social developments and trends and his pointed contributions to the public debate make Gerald Haug a much sought-after speaker.