After undergraduate studies of Mathematics and Philosophy at Hamburg and Cambridge (UK) I did my PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Béla Bollobás. From 1986 to 1989 I was a Research Fellow at St. John's College, Cambridge, habilitating externally at Hamburg in 1987. After a few years at the Sonderforschungsbereich 343 in Bielefeld and a year in Oxford I became a professor at Chemnitz in 1994, from where I moved to Hamburg in 1999.
(+ various student and research scholarships, including a DFG Heisenberg fellowship)