Erwin Weiss studied Chemistry at the TU Munich and graduated with a doctoral thesis "On the Structural Chemistry of Metal Carbonyl Compounds and Aromatic Complexes”, under the supervision of Walter Hieber in 1956. His experimental work included the pioneering proof of the crystal structure of bis(benzene)chromium, following its first syntheses by W. Hafner and Nobel laureate E. O. Fischer. Weiss later worked as research fellow at MIT (Cambridge, USA), ERA (Brussels, BE), and CERI (Geneva, CH) before accepting the call to the University of Hamburg. Following his early studies of the structural elucidation of methyl alkali metals, Prof. Weiss systematically extended the scope of his research to many novel organometallic compounds of the s-, p-, and d-block metals with a wide range of ligands, including carbonyls, olefins, and organyls. Prof. Weiss died at the age of 92 in 2019. Today his groundbreaking works are well recognized and continue to blossom in various aspects of modern organometallic chemistry, coordination chemistry, and catalysis.