Horst Vogel studied Chemistry at the University of Würzburg/Germany. After his diploma thesis in Physical Chemistry he went to the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen where he performed his PhD work on the “Structure of lipid membranes” in the Departments of Profs. M. Eigen and A. Weller.
In the following he worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biology in Tübingen/Germany, at the Biocenter of the University of Basel/Switzerland and at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm/Sweden, studying the structure and dynamics of membrane proteins.
In 1994 he was appointed as a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the EPFL.