Gerald Dyker was born in 1960. He studied chemistry at Dortmund University where he received his doctorate in 1988 for a thesis on ortho-quinonoid hetarenes. After postdoctoral research on ruthenium catalysis at Stanford University, he worked as a research chemist at Bayer AG in the field of veterinary pharmaceuticals. A Liebig fellowship enabled the completion of his habilitation on palladium catalyzed domino processes in 1994 at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Between 1995 and 1999 he was Professor for Organometallic Chemistry at Duisburg University. Since 2000 he has been Professor for Organic Chemistry at Bochum University. In addition to transition metal catalysis his current research interests include the synthesis of various complex targets, such as ligands with multiple coordination sites and a "nanodimensional baseball glove" for the complexation of metallic nanoparticles.