Prof. Dr. E.V. Dehmlow was born in Berlin/Germany in 1933. He studied chemistry, literature and social sciences for a year as an exchange student in the USA (Earlham College), then changed back to Berlin. He received his Diploma (1959) at Free University and his Ph.D. (1961) at Technical University in Berlin. After a postdoctoral year at Yale University (New Haven, CT) and habilitation (1968) he became (associate) Professor at T.U. Berlin. In 1979 he was called to the University of Bielefeld as full professor. Over the years, he served as a visiting professor in the USA (MIT [Cambridge, MA], University of Oklahoma [Norman]), in England ( U. of East Anglia [Norwich]), Japan (Kyoto), Russia ( Leningrad), South Africa ( U. of Venda) and India (Pune). He became professor emeritus at the end of the summer term 1998, but he is still active in research.