Very few individuals can nowadays be qualified as traiblazers in their legal fields, but Rudolf Dolzer was definitely one of them, one of the earliest scholars to understand how important and a game changer for international dispute resolution would international investment law become. He was mainly a law professor at the University of Bonn (Germany), but also appeared as arbitrator and legal expert in various proceedings, notably in ICC, ICSID and BIT-UNCITRAL cases, and more recently before US courts in the Yukos cases.

He started his legal studies in his home country, Germany, both at the University of Tubingen and at the University of Heidelberg. He then continued post-doctoral studies on international law at Harvard Law School, graduating with a masters of law and a doctorate of law science in 1977.

He began an eminent academic career at the Max Planck Institute (Heidelberg), then at the University of Mannheim and finally at the University of Bonn. During these years he also undertook many visiting professorships notably at Cornell Law School, Michigan Law School, the MIT, Yale, the Sorbonne or the Hague Academy.

Between 1992 and 1996, he became director-general of the Office of the Federal Chancellor, Helmut Kohl at the time. Finally, in 2010, he was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

As early as in 1995, Rudolf Dolzer wrote, alongside Margrete Stevens, one of the founding monographs of the subject, under the auspices of ICSID, entitled Bilateral Investment Treaties. It is the first book providing an in depth analysis of the content of the provisions of these conventional instruments. In 2008, together with Christoph Schreuer, he wrote, what has become the leading textbook entitled Principles of international investment law. The second edition was published in 2012.

Finally, it is worth noting that he issued, in 2015 under SCC arbitration rules, the very first emergency arbitrator award to be enforced against a state by a domestic court, ordering Ukraine to cease imposing higher taxes on an investor, JKX Oil and Gas, in an Energy Charter Treaty arbitration.

His contributions to the field of international law, and more particularly international investment law, will be greatly missed.