Horst Kessler


Horst Kessler is a German chemist and Emeritus Professor of Excellence at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Technical University of Munich.

Life and work

Horst Kessler was the son of Walter and Gertrude Kessler. He went to school from 1946-1958 in Suhl, and studied chemistry at the Leipzig University from 1958-1961. He became a student of Eugen Müller at the University of Tübingen, and completed his Master in 1963, thereafter his PhD at 1966. In 1969, he underwent habilitation in organic chemistry, entitling him to become a professor. He was briefly a University lecturer at Tübingen, then he obtained an organic chemistry lecturer position at the University of Frankfurt am Main. In 1989, he moved to the position of Professor of organic chemistry and biochemistry at the Technical University of Munich, where he was in charge of overseeing the installation of one of the four 900 MHz NMR spectrometers in Germany at that time. At TUM, he was Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry, Biology and Earth Sciences from 1994-1996. From October 2008 onwards, he is a Carl-von-Linde Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at TUM.
Kessler works in the area of bioorganic chemistry, in particular peptide synthesis, and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. He also made contributions to magnetic resonance imaging.

Notable achievements

In 1996, Kessler became a member of the highly-selective Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the largest of the eight state academies in Germany. In 2002, he was elected to membership of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the highest academic honour awarded by an institution in Germany.
Kessler's Google Scholar profile shows that he has authored more than 600 articles and has an H-index of over 90, including an article for stimulating cell adhesion on biomaterials which had been cited over 1000 times.