 In 1974 he received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Technical University of Munich.After postdoctoral work and a scientific staff position at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory he worked as a staff scientist at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) and at EXXON Corporate Research Laboratory.He then spent nearly fifteen years at the IBM Almaden Research Center, where he conducted x-ray research in the areas of surface science and magnetic materials and managed various research departments.