Gerhard Ringel is one of the world's foremost experts on combinatorics and graph theory.

Ringel was born in Kollnbrunn, Austria on October 28, 1919. He received a doctorate from Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn, Germany in 1951. After earning teaching credentials there in 1953, Ringel began lecturing in mathematics at the university. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1956, remaining in that post until 1960. Meanwhile, in 1957, Ringel had taken a simultaneous job as a mathematics lecturer at Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt. He also left that post in 1960.

Starting a new position as associate professor at Berlin's Free University soon thereafter, Ringel rose rapidly through the academic ranks. He was appointed a full professor of mathematics in 1966 and director of the school's Mathematics Institute in 1970. In 1967, he spent a year as visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Ringel returned to UC Santa Cruz in 1970, accepting an appointment as professor of mathematics. He spent the next 20 years actively teaching at the school, achieving emeritus status in 1990. Ringel continues his research there, concentrating chiefly on methods of current graphs and their applicability to embedding graphs into surfaces, to some problems in elementary geometry, and to group theory.