Grötschel was born in Schwelm, Germany, and earned a diploma in mathematics with minor in economics in 1973 from the University of Bochum.

He completed a doctorate in 1977 at the University of Bonn under the supervision of Bernhard Korte, and obtained his habilitation at Bonn in the field operations research in 1981.

One year later he was appointed full professor for applied mathematics at the University of Augsburg.

From 1991 until his retirement at the end of September 2015 he was, while also engaged at ZIB, full professor for information technology at Technical University Berlin.

Martin Grötschel was a member of the Executive Committee of the German Mathematical Society (Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (DMV)) from 1989 to 1996 and from 1993 to 1994 its President.

From 1999 to 2014 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and from 2007 to 2014 IMU's General Secretary.

Since 2011 he has been a member of the Executive Board of the Einstein Foundation Berlin and was from 2011 to 2015 its Chair.

He was co-founder and longstanding Chair of the DFG Research Center Matheon "Mathematics for key technologies".

 

Martin Grötschel has been married since 1976 with his wife Iris Grötschel and has three daughters.