He studied metallurgical engineering from 1954 to 1957 (and from 1972 to 1974) at the RWTH Aachen, and from 1994 to 2004 at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf.
After receiving his diploma in 1992 and his PhD in 1994 in Computer Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology he worked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Max Planck Institute of Computer Science before he switched to the RWTH Aachen in 2001.
During his Doctorate studies at RWTH, he were employed as a laboratory development Engineer by Telefunken AG, Ulm, Germany, from 1962-1964.