Karl Wieghardt

[1] From 1947-1952, Wieghardt lived in England as his father was working at the Admiralty Research Laboratory of the British Navy in Teddington.

[1] Following the nuclear espionage affair surrounding Klaus Fuchs, Wieghardt's father was dismissed from the Admiralty Research Laboratory, and he moved his family back to Germany.

[1] At the age of 12, Wieghardt obtained a chemistry kit as a Christmas present from his parents, then proceeded to set his basement on fire.

[7][8][9][10][11] Wieghardt returned to Germany, and completed his habilitation at the University of Heidelberg in 1975 with a thesis on the structural chemistry and mechanistic investigations on polynuclear cobalt-amine complexes.

It was at this stage of his career that he expanded the size of his research group, and moved into the field of bioinorganic chemistry, synthesizing transition metal complexes that act as analogs for metalloprotein active sites.