Friedrich Hirzebruch was born on October 17, 1927 in Hamm, Germany. He studied mathematics at the University of MA1/4nster and the ETH ZA1/4rich, under Heinrich Behnke and Heinz Hopf.

Shortly after the award of his doctoral degree in 1950, he obtained an assistantship in Erlangen and then a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, followed by an assistant professorship at Princeton University. In 1956 he returned to Germany to a chair at the University of Bonn, which he held until his retirement in 1993. Since 1980 he has been the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn.

Hirzebruch's work has been fundamental in combining topology, algebraic and differential geometry and number theory. It has had a deep and far-reaching influence on the work of many others, who have expanded and generalized his ideas. His most famous result is the theorem of Riemann-Roch-Hirzebruch.