Manfred Eigen visits the humanistic Gymnasium am Ostring and graduates in 1945.

Manfred Eigen is born to his parents Ernst, an excellent pianist and Hedwig (née Feld) in Bochum, Germany.

Manfred Eigen starts to study physics and chemistry at the Georg-August University of Göttingen. He earns his Bachelor's degree in 1949.

Manfred Eigen becomes director of biokinetics of the Max-Planck-Institute at Göttingen in 1964. From 1970 until his retirement in 1995 he is the Director of the Institute. He is also married with Elfriede Müller, with whom he has two children.

Manfred Eigen switches to Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer at the Max-Planck-Institute of Physical Chemistry, which had moved to Göttingen.

Manfred Eigen becomes assistant lecturer at the physical chemistry department of the Georg-August University of Göttingen.

Manfred Eigen becomes Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Braunschweig in 1965.

Manfred Eigen, Ronald Norrish and George Porter are awarded the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their studies of extremely fast chemical reactions, effected by disturbing the equilibrium by means of very short pulses of energy.

Manfred Eigen starts working on the problem of fast ionic reactions in solution in 1951. In the following years he develops many new measuring techniques (relaxation spectrometry), even for very fast reactions down to nanoseconds. He is also interested in proton reactions and along with Leo De Maeyer he determines the neutralization rate and does researches on protons in ice crystals. Furthermore he investigates metal complexes.

Manfred Eigen receives his PhD in natural science at the Georg-August University of Göttingen in 1951. His thesis is about the specific heat of heavy water and aqueous electrolyte solutions.

Together with Peter Schuster, Manfred Eigen describes the chemical hypercycle, the cyclic linkage of reaction cycles as an explanation for the self-organization of prebiotic systems in 1977.