He studied under Clusius at the Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
In 1939, the year Dickel defended his PhD thesis, the pair announced that they had also separated isotopes of chlorine with the same process.
It was explored on a large scale in the USA during World War II as a possible method for separating uranium-235 from the more abundant uranium-238 in order to make an atomic bomb (the more-efficient gaseous diffusion was eventually chosen).
[1][2][3] Dickel became a substitute manager of the Institute for Physical Chemistry, followed by a position as adjunct professor.
The same year he received the Bodenstein Prize from the German Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry, for work on isotope exchange and on diffusion in gases and gels.