Julius Tafel was born in the village of Choindez in Courrendlin, Switzerland on 2 June 1862.

Tafel's father, Julius Tafel Sr. (1827-1893) studied chemistry in Tubingen and became a director of Von Roll’s iron and steel works located in Choindez in 1856, and then took a top management position in steel works located in Gerlafingen in 1863.

[1] Tafel attended the Realgymnasium in Stuttgart and Nuremberg, then studied chemistry from 1880 in Zurich, Munich, and Erlangen.

He is known for the discovery of an electrosynthetic rearrangement reaction of various alkylated ethyl acetoacetates to form hydrocarbons, now called the Tafel rearrangement, and the Tafel equation, which relates the rate of an electrochemical reaction to the overpotential.

Tafel retired aged 48 due to ill health but continued to write book reviews until his death.