Born in 1950, Rainer Mahrwald studied chemistry at MLU Halle and subsequently joined the "Manfred von Ardenne" Research Institute in Dresden, where he led the synthetics group. He gained his doctorate under G. Wagner in Leipzig in 1979, and went on to the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the Academy of Science in Berlin, where he remained until 1990. Following a stay at the Philipps-University in Marburg, Dr. Mahrwald qualified as a lecturer at the Humboldt University Berlin, where he is now a private lecturer.