Karl Otto Stetter (born 16 July 1941) is a German microbiologist and authority on astrobiology. Stetter is an expert on microbial life at high temperatures.
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Career
Stetter was born in Munich and studied biology at the Technical University of Munich. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on lactobacilli. From 1980 to 2002 Stetter was professor at, and head of, the department of microbiology and of the Archaea center of the University of Regensburg.
The majority of Stetter's research has focused on sampling, isolating and characterizing archaeal organisms which comprise the third domain of life, particularly undiscovered extremely heat-loving (hyperthermophilic) bacteria and Archaea, also called extremophiles, growing optimally between 80 and 113 °C.
Major discovery
In 1992, Stetter, along with Robert Huber, discovered a new species of thermophilic bacteria near Kolbeinsey Ridge and named the species Aquifex pyrophilous.
Nanoarchaeum equitans, an archaeal microorganism containing the world's then smallest known genome, was discovered by Stetter in 2002 in a hydrothermal vent off the coast of Iceland. This archaeon was described in the scientific journal Nature in May 2002.