[1][2] Fenske studied chemistry at the University of Münster, received his PhD in 1973 and his Habilitation in 1978.
[1] He is Professor for Inorganic chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe and Director at the Institute for Nanotechnology (INT) of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.
[1] In 1991, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
[4] Since 1999, he is a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
[2] In 2005, he received a Doctor honoris causa title from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk.