[1][2][3] He was born during World War II to the son of a member of the German consular staff in Boston, Massachusetts.
[4] During his Ph.D. work he was responsible for the construction of the first quadrupole mass spectrometer in Canada as part of his studies on gas phase ion chemistry.
He pursued his interest in the subject as a post-doctoral Research Associate at the University of London and at the Aeronomy Laboratory of the Environmental Sciences Service Administration in Boulder, Colorado.
During this period he did pioneering work on the measurement of accurate gas phase acidities of organic molecules using the newly developed flowing afterglow technique.
In 1970 he moved to the new York University in north Toronto to join the Chemistry Department, where he spent the next 35+ years working in a number of areas of chemistry as well as contributing to significant instrumental developments associated with the flowing afterglow technique.