Mathias S. Wickleder was born in Bergen, Germany, in 1965. He received his Dr. rer. nat. degree at the University of Hannover under the direction of Professor G. Meyer in 1994. Thereafter he joined the group of Professor H. U. Gu ¨del, Bern, Switzerland, as a postdoctoral fellow for two years. In 2000 he finished his Habilitation at the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry in Cologne. His research interests include the structural chemistry and thermal behavior of rare-earth and transition-metal compounds with complex anions.