David Rickard has been one of the world’s leading sulfide experts for over 40 years. He was a pioneer in geomicrobiology. He started his career as a senior undergraduate at Imperial College, London, with a thesis on pyrite framboids. He was awarded a £10,000 grant by the UK scientific research council in 1965 to set up a geomicrobiology laboratory in Imperial College and completed his PhD thesis in 1968 on the Chemistry and Microbiology of Iron Sulphide Formation. His work with the Swedish Natural Science Research Council was particularly focussed on geochemical kinetics and constituted some of the earliest contributions to this subject. At the same time he worked on Economic Geology and founded the largest ore geology research group of the time in Stockholm. He was appointed to a Chair in Cardiff University in 1983 and has continued to contribute to sulfide geochemistry and ore geology.He has over 300 publications including over 150 research journal papers and two edited books. He published his first paper in Nature in 1968. He was Chief Editor of Chemical Geology and Mineralium Deposita. His latest interests have involved characterizing nanoparticulate metal sulfides and their interactions with biochemical molecules, including nucleic acid polymers. He has received a number of awards including Fellowships of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry and Honorary Membership of the Society of Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits. He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. His multidisciplinary contributions have been recognized by his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Society of Biology and the Geological Society.