Edmund Büuerlein was born in 1932 in Höchst (Germany). He studied chemistry in Saarbrücken, Munich, and Frankfurt (Germany) and he completed his PhD with Prof. Th. Wieland on biologically relevant hydroquinones. He then moved to the Max-Planck-Institut für medizinische Forschung, Heidelberg (Germany), as a research group leader. He completed his Habilitation at the Fakultät für Chemie, Universität Heidelberg in 1974, where he was appointed Professor in 1980. In 1984 he moved to the Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie in Munich, Abteilung Membranbiochemie, where he was research group leader until the end of his active service in 1997.