Gottfried Schatz studied chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Graz. After stays at the University of Vienna and the Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York and a six-year professorship at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, he became a professor at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Biozentrum at the University of Basel in 1974. After he retired in 2000, he served as president of the Swiss Science and Technology Council for four years. In his scientific work, this visionary researcher played a prominent role in explaining the formation of mitochondria and is considered a co-discoverer of mitochondrial DNA.
