Philipp Lenard was born in Pressburg (today's Bratislava), on 7 June 1862 in the Kingdom of Hungary. The Lenard family were of German-descent. His father, Philipp von Lenardis (1812–1896), was a wine-merchant in Pressburg. His mother was Antonie Baumann (1831–1865). In 1880, he studied physics and chemistry in Vienna and Budapest, going back to Pressburg in 1882. After being refused an assistant's position in the University of Budapest in 1883, he moved to Heidelberg. He studied under the Robert Bunsen, and also one semester in Berlin with Hermann von Helmholtz. He gained a doctoral degree in 1886. In 1887 he went back to Budapest to work for Loránd Eötvös. After working in Aachen, Bonn, Breslau, Heidelberg (1896–1898), and Kiel (1898–1907), he went back to the University of Heidelberg in 1907 as the head of the Philipp Lenard Institute. In 1905, Lenard became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1907, he became a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.