Störmer moved to France to carry out his PhD research in Grenoble, working in a high-magnetic field laboratory which was run jointly between the French CNRS and the German Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. Störmer's academic advisor was Prof. Hans-Joachim Queisser, and he was awarded a PhD by the University of Stuttgart in 1977 for his thesis on investigations of electron hole droplets subject to high magnetic fields. He also met his wife, Dominique Parchet, while working in Grenoble. They divorced each other a few years later.