A native of Hamburg, Karsten Gohl first began studying physics at the University of Hamburg in 1982 and later switched to geophysics. After graduating in 1987, the wide world lured him; his path first led him to the University of Wyoming (USA), where he worked under Prof. Scott B. Smithson in 1991 with a seismic dissertation on Seismic wide-angle studies of early Archean and Proterozoic crust in Greenland, Minnesota and Wyoming. In 1991-92, Karsten Gohl was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Swedish Research Council at Uppsala University and then a scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute Bremerhaven for 4 years.

In 1996 Gohl accepted the position of a Lecturer in Geophysics at Macquarie University in Sydney, but returned to the Alfred Wegener Institute as Senior Scientist in 2000. Many scientifically very productive years followed for him there, with numerous ship expeditions that took him, often as cruise applicant and leader, on the large German research vessels RV Polarstern and RV Sonne to the Southern Ocean and South Pacific. A highlight was certainly his role as Co-Chief Scientist of IODP Expedition 379 to the Amundsen Sea (West Antarctica) with the drillship JOIDES Resolution in 2019. After the retirement of Prof. Wilfried Jokat, he also took over the leadership of the Geophysics Section of the Alfred Wegener Institute in January 2019.

Dr. Karsten Gohl is an internationally established and collaborating scientist in marine geophysics and polar research. As author and co-author of 125 high-ranking and frequently cited scientific papers on tectonics, dynamics and sedimentation history of passive and active continental margins, he has gained worldwide renown. His research centers on the geophysical investigation of the structures and processes that led to the formation of ocean basins. To this end, he combines a broad spectrum of different geophysical methods and approaches and uses marine as well as non-marine data from a wide range of polar regions, which can definitely be considered a unique selling point of his work.