Ralf Steudel
Ralf Steudel (* 25 March 1937 – 12 February 2021) was a German chemist and university professor who was known for his research in the area of sulfur chemistry as well as for his textbook Chemistry of the Non-Metals which appeared in several languages and many editions. Steudel was born to a family of entrepreneurs in the Saxonian town of Kamenz. In 1954 he moved to West Berlin, and started his university studies in chemistry in 1957 at the Free University Berlin where he graduated in 1963. In 1965, he received his PhD in chemistry at the Technical University  Berlin (TUB) where he subsequently made his habilitation work resulting in the venia legendi for inorganic chemistry in 1969. In the same year he was appointed professor of inorganic chemistry at TUB, a position he held till his retirement in 2003. In 1973/74 he spent 1 year as a visiting professor at the Spectroscopy Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge (Mass.).