Professor Ertl studied physics at the Technical University of Stuttgart from 1955 to 1957. He studied at the University of Paris from 1957 to 1958 and then at Ludwig Maximillians University in Munich from 1958 to 1959. He returned to the Technical University of Stuttgart where he got a diplom of physics in 1961. Then he studied at the Technical University of Munich and got a PhD in 1965.