The reconstruction of ocean history, called palaeoceanography, is a relatively young scientific discipline initiated by the work of Cesare Emiliani and colleagues in the 50s of the last century by studying the stable oxygen and carbon isotopic composition of marine organisms. It had its climax in the 70s and 80s, for example in "The Fate of Fossil Fuel CO₂ in the Oceans", a visionary book edited by Andersen and Malahoff published in 1977. Here, seminal contributions by people like Wally Broecker and Wolfgang Berger document the importance of quantifying the magnitude and rate of climatic change as well as variability in the past to better understand the effect of human action on the climate system leading to ongoing global warming. A broad spectrum of studies have been performed since then, ranging from process and modelling studies as well as laboratory culturing of marine organisms to so-called high-resolution studies in time intervals of rapid climate change during the Cenozoic with a focus on the Pleistocene and Holocene. For the latter studies, sediment cores taken during the DSDP and IODP expeditions are a natural archive for the ocean history of the past 60 million years. Dick Kroon already realized all this as a student and spent his whole life dedicated to this field of science in a passionate way.

For this special issue (SI) we invite contributions from colleagues of Dick who cooperated with him in his numerous projects in teaching and research. Topics should be related to (palaeo)oceanography and cover time intervals from the Holocene to the Cenozoic.

We will add a special appendix to this SI, to which people can contribute personal memories and stories about Dick.