Professor Dieter Fenske was born in Dortmund, Germany in 1942 where he attended school. In 1968 he entered the University of Münster to study chemistry and completed his undergraduate research work (Diplomarbeit) in the area of organoboron compounds, graduating in 1971. He obtained his doctorate in chemistry at Münster in 1973, working with Prof. Dr. H. J. Becker on the IR and Raman spectroscopie characterization of organophosphorus compounds.

In 1978 he completed his Habilitation in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Münster and was appointed to a professorship in the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany in 1981. In 1986 he accepted he C4 professorship and Chair in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Frankfurt but returned to Karlsruhe as Professor and Chair of the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry in 1988. He held a Visiting Lectureship at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie in Strasbourg, France from 1981-2000. At the University of Karlsruhe, he has held the positions of Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry (1991-1993) and Vice President (1994-1998). Since 1998, he is a founding co-director of the Institute for Nanotechnology, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. He has sat on several journal editorial and advisory boards and has been a member of both to scientific advisory council and of the Senate of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Professor Fenske hat published over 380 scientific publications and has received numerous awards for his work, including the G. W. Leibniz Prize from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (1990), the W. Klemm Prize from the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (1993), and he is an elected member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften Heidelberg (1999). In 2003 he became Overseas Guest Scientist at University of Cambridge (St. John´s College), 3-M Lecture at University of Western Ontario (Canade) and E. A. Muetterties Lecturer at University of California at Berkeley. In 2005 he is going to get a Doctor honoris causa from the Russian Academy of Sciences (Siberian Branch) in Novosibirsk. His current research interests include the synthesis of new organophosphorus ligands and their use in coordination chemistry and the synthesis of cluster compounds of main group elements and transition metal elementents, including investigations of their physical properties as a function of cluster size and their utility as precursors for metastable binary phases. To date he has supervised over 90 students for their diplom- and doktorarbeit.