Colin Devey was born as the son of a mining engineer and a physiotherapist in 1961 in Holmfirth, North England. As a three-year-old he had his first experience collecting minerals on the local mine tailing piles with his father, surrounded by enormous bulldozers. Although he was fascinated by astronomy as a child, it was clear by the end of his time at school that his mathematical abilities were not sufficient for him to realistically have a chance of successfully studying this at university. So he chose to study geology, first at the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, University London and then, for his PhD, at the University Oxford where he studied lavas in western India which were erupted around the time the dinosaurs became extinct. During a subsequent 2-year post-doctoral stay in Nancy, France, he had his first experience of marine geology, participating in a cruise with the German research vessel "Sonne" to Tahiti. During this cruise the chief scientist offered him a position at the University of Kiel, where he also attained his "habilitation" in 1994. In 1998 he was appointed to a professorship at the University of Bremen and in 2004 returned as Professor for Seafloor Volcanism to the University of Kiel and the research centre GEOMAR. At GEOMAR he has been head of the department "Dynamics of the Seafloor", Assistant Director and has also led a German Science Foundation Priority Program on "Volcanism and Hydrothermalism on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge". Since 2013 he has presented several program on the geology of Germany and Europe in the ZDF series "Terra-X". He is married and has 3 children.
