Wolfgang Schmickler studied physics and chemistry at the Universities of Bonn and Heidelberg and at the Imperial College in London. In 1973 he received his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Bonn. After completing his degree he received first a Liebig Fellowship from the German Association of the Chemical Industry and then a Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Reseach Foundation (DFG). He used the freedom that these fellowships offered him for extended visits at the Frumkin Institute in Moscow, the Laboratoire d Electrochimie Interfaciale du CNRS in Meudon, France, and the IBM Research Laboratory in San Jose, California, USA. For his work on the theory of the electric double layer he received the 2Bodenstein Award" of the Deutsche Bunsengesellschaft in 1985. He became an assistant professor at the University of Bonn in the same year, but moved to the United States in 1990, where he held the position of an Associate Professor at Utah State University in Logan. In 1992, he returned to Germany and took a faculty position at the University of Ulm, where he has been since. His research interests lie in theoretical electrochemistry; in recent years the focus of his work has been on electrocatalysis and electrode surface processes. He is a Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry, and Corresponding Scientist of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas of Argentina.
