Frieder Nake is a professor of Graphic Data Processing and Interactive Systems at the Department of Computer Science, University of Bremen, Germany. He holds two degrees in mathematics from the University of Stuttgart (the Diplom-Mathematiker and the Dr.rer.nat.). His doctoral degree was in probability theory (1967). As a postdoctoral fellow, he did research on computer art and graphics at the University of Toronto (1968/69). He became an assistant professor in computer science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in 1970, and went to Bremen as a full professor of computer science in 1972. His current research interests are in computer graphics, hypermedia, computer art, semiotics, computers in education, and theory of computer science.

He began work on computer art in December 1963, and is recognized as one of the first three researchers to exhibit their computer art work in galleries (in his case, in November 1965 at Wendelin Niedlich Galerie, Stuttgart). He had a large number of art exhibitions, both solo and group showings, during the years from 1966 through 1972. Later, he showed his work only occasionally, but he is a lecturer on art topics, and publishes on them. He again began to exhibit with two one-man shows at the Kunsthalle Bremen (Nov. 2004 through Jan. 2005) and at ZKM in Karlsruhe (Feb. through April, 2005). These two exhibitions, under the title "Frieder Nake: Die präzisen Vergnügen" (delights of precision), combined retrospectives of early graphics works with new interactive installations. The installations came out of collaboration with students taking up themes of old works. Several more shows have followed since.

He has published in all of the above mentioned areas (mainly in German), and has an extensive teaching record on all levels of computer science. He won the First Prize of the Computer Art Contest of "Computers and Automation" in 1966. In 1997, he was awarded the University of Bremen award for excellence in teaching. He has been a visiting professor to the University of Vienna (in 1988), to the University of Oslo (in 1995), the University of Colorado at Boulder (in 1993, 1998, 2007), the University of Aarhus, Denmark (in 2000, 2002, and 2004), the International School of New Media at Lübeck (since 2003). Currently, he is also teaching at the University of the Arts at Bremen. He has organized national and international conferences on computer graphics, document processing, semiotics, and human-machine interaction. He has served as chair of a Special Interest Group on Computers and Society within the German "Gesellschaft für Informatik," and has served as a member elect of that society's steering committee.