Horst Kisch studied chemistry at the University of Vienna, Austria, where he received his Ph.D. in 1969. From 1968 to 1984 he worked at the Max-Planck-Institut für Strahlenchemie (now Max-Planck-Institut für Chemische Energiekonversion) in Mülheim a.d. Ruhr, Germany. In 1977 he completed his "habilitation" in Organic Chemistry at the University of Dortmund, Germany, and became Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, 1984. He retired in 2008. His research interests were the catalytic activation of 1,2-diazenes by transition metals and physical consequences of weak charge-transfer interactions in redox active ion pair complexes. Recently he was engaged in new organic syntheses photocatalyed by semiconductor powders and in the photofixation of dinitrogen by nanostructured thin films.