Schlögl was born October 5, 1924, in Vienna. Schlögl's first contact with organic chemistry happened during his middle-school education, when his father - the principal and teacher for natural sciences - took young Karl to school after hours to do experiments together.
Schlögl graduated from high-school in 1943 and was declared unfit for service by the Wehrmacht due to his asthma.
He started studying chemistry at the University of Vienna under Ernst Späth, where he completed his dissertation in 1950.
From 1954 to 1955 Schlögl began working on ferrocenes at the University of Manchester during a British council scholarship.
After his return to the University of Vienna he achieved the habilitation for organic chemistry in 1959.
In 1970 Schlögl was promoted to associate professor and in 1971 to full professor for organic chemistry.
Since 1974 he was director, and since 1978 chairman of the [http://www.univie.ac.at/orgchem/ Institute of Organic Chemistry] at the University of Vienna. From 1977 through 1979 he was the first elected Dean of the  Faculty of Formal and Natural Sciences at the University of Vienna.
The Austrian Academy of Sciences elected Schlögl as a corresponding member in 1978 and as a full member in 1982. From 1991 to 1995 Schlögl was general secretary of the academy, and from 1997 to 2000 he was vice-president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Furthermore, Schlögl was a corresponding member of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften as well as the New York Academy of Sciences.