Dr. Hermann Sicius was born in Düsseldorf in 1958 and is a chemist, translator and book author. After completing his doctorate at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, he worked in the chemical industry. Hermann Sicius lived in North America for three years for professional reasons and began working with Springer in 2014. This resulted in the compact books in Springer's Essentials series on the subject of chemical elements and finally this reference work. Editors of well-known regional newspapers and societies have invited him to give lectures on this subject.