Horst Kessler (born 5 April 1940) is a German chemist and emeritus Professor of Excellence at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

[1][2] Kessler works in the area of bioorganic chemistry, in particular peptide synthesis, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

He completed his Master (Diplom) in 1963, and his PhD at 1966 with Eugen Müller at the University of Tübingen.

In 1989, he became Professor of organic chemistry and biochemistry at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), where he was in charge of overseeing the installation of one of the four 900 MHz NMR spectrometers in Germany at that time.

[3] At TUM, he was Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry, Biology and Earth Sciences from 1994 to 1996.