Biemann was born in
Innsbruck, Austria in 1926. He was drafted into the
Wehrmacht during the final months of
World War II and was sent to aid the divisions fighting against Allied forces then retreating before the Soviet Army on the Eastern Front. Fearing capture, he deserted with a friend to travel back to Innsbruck. Following in the footsteps of his father, he studied
pharmacy at the
University of Innsbruck where he graduated in 1948. He received his PhD at the
University of Innsbruck supervised by
Hermann Bretschneider in 1951. He started his work on his
habilitation, but instead moved to the
MIT in 1955 to work as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of
George Büchi. Two years later with the assistance of Büchi, he was offered a faculty position at MIT in the analytical chemistry division where he turned his focus to peptide analysis and sequencing. Before embarking on his new research, however, Biemann decided to buy a
mass spectrometer and use it to study peptides instead. He used his background in organic chemistry to modify peptides so that they become volatile and entered the gas phase, making them amenable to
electron ionization, the only feasible ionization technique at the time. He partnered on the NASA Viking mission project to Mars which failed to detect organic matter on its the surface in 1976. ==Awards and honors==