Erich K.P. Schiller was born in Hamburg in 1922. In 1940 he became a student of Max Clara, Wolfgang Bargmann and Richard Arwed Pfeifer, and later gained his Medical License at the University of Leipzig and his MD at the University of Essen. For a long period he was involved in research into silicosis at Rheinpreussen Mining Company before joining the Institute of Hygiene and Occupational Medicine at the University of Essen. He then became Head of Experimental Pathology at Cassella Co, Frankfurt and subsequently worked at the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim and the German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg. Dr. Schiller is a member of a number of prestigious societies, including the Anatomische Gesellschaft, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pathologie (German Society of Pathology) and the Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

He has published extensively in the German, English and French languages and is the author of Free Radicals and Inhalation Pathology , published in 2004. Dr. Schiller was selected for inclusion in the volume Outstanding People of the 21st Century published by the International Biographical Centre.