From 1950 to 1956 he attended Karlsruhe Institute of Technology from which he received his diploma in mathematics.
From 1957 to 1961 he became a scientific assistant there and for a year later worked at Standard Electric Lorenz Company.
From 1962 to 1970 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, at Garching not too far away from Munich.
He was a resident in mathematics at the Technical University in Aachen in 1970 and a year later became a professor there.
During his life he collaborated with scientists from China, Israel, Italy, Japan, former Soviet Union, United States and Vietnam.