The European Research Center for Fireballs and Meteorites (E R F M) got its current official name only in the year 2008. But already in 1998 started everything step by step with the first activities. In the year 2004 Thomas Grau founded an initiative called "Ausgangspunkt Erde" and began to act and organise financially independent from other institutions. Now he is directing the still quite small team of the ERFM. This institution addresses oneself to the task to document events of detonating fireballs respectively sporadically occurring meteorite falls and to examine as accurately as possible. In doing so the area of operation is confined to the European continent as already indicated by its name.
Thomas Grau is a specialist for meteor and meteorite science.