Kurt Flasch was born in 1930 in Mainz. He studied philosophy, history, classical philology and science Germanic in Frankfort am Main between 1950 and 1957. In 1956 a doctoral thesis on Johannes Hirschberger and Max Horkheimer. In 1969 he was awarded the chair of philosophy specializing in medieval philosophy at the Ruhr-University Bochum. Offered lectures and visiting professor at the Sorbonne (Paris). In 1993 he became a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome), the world's oldest academy, which also belonged to Galileo Galilei. He is the author of numerous books about the history of philosophical thought.