Meinrat O. Andreae was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1949.
He studied earth sciences at the universities of Karlsruhe and Göttingen.
He received his Ph.D. in Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, in 1977.
From 1978 to 1982 he worked as an Assistant Professor of Oceanography, and from 1982 to 1986 as Associate Professor of Oceanography at Florida State University, Tallahassee.
During 1986 -1987 he was Professor for Oceanography at the same university.
Since 1987 he is director of the Biogeochemistry Department and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.
Meinrat O. Andreae has been Visiting Professor at the University of Antwerp, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the University of California, Irvine, and the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
He is member of the scientific steering committee of the ‘Large Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA)’ and Chair of the IGBP Core Project ‘Integrated Land Ecosystem Atmospheric Processes Study (ILEAPS)’.
Meinrat O. Andreae is reviewing Editor of the journal SCIENCE.