Erwin Neher was born in Landsberg, Germany, in 1944, the son of Franz Xavier Neher and Elisabeth Pfeiffer Neher. In 1967, he earned his master's degree from the University of Wisconsin under a Fulbright scholarship. He then went on to complete his doctorate at the Institute of Technology in Munich, Germany, in 1970.

While the existence of ion channels that transmit electrical charges was hypothesized as early as the 1950s, no one had been able to see these channels. As a doctoral student, Neher was drawn to the question of how electrically charged ions control such biological functions as the transmission of nerve impulses, the contraction of muscles, vision, and the process of conception. He realized that in order to get answers to these questions he would have to look for the ion channels.

It was in his doctoral thesis that Neher first developed the concept of the patch clamp technique...