Reiner Schlitzer obtained a Diploma in Physics and a PhD in Environmental Physics at the University of Heidelberg. He held a post-doctoral position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, habilitated at the University of Bremen and then moved to the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven. Since 2003 he is Professor for Environmental Physics at the University Bremen.

He studies the biogeochemical cycles of oxygen, nutrients, carbon and other tracers in the ocean and has worked as observationalist, producing the first radiocarbon section in the East Atlantic and as modeller, developing and using inverse models for the quantification of marine production, carbon uptake and transport, as well as fluxes and remineralization of particles. He is the developer of the Ocean Data View software and the creator of the eWOCE and eGEOTRACES electronic atlases.