After his studies in chemistry at the University of Göttingen from 1958 to 1963 and after his diploma in chemistry in 1963, Bernt Krebs received his Dr. rer.nat. degree in 1965. In 1965 and 1966 he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory with Walter Hamilton and Don Koenig. After his habilitation in the field of inorganic chemistry at the University of Göttingen he got tenure as a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Kiel in 1971. In 1973 he followed a call as a Professor at the newly founded University of Bielefeld where he was successful in establishing a new chemistry department and new chemistry curricula.
During his full professorship of inorganic chemistry at the University of Münster since 1977, he established his group as an internationally recognized research centre in the field of coordination chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry and structural chemistry. His research covers a broad range of fields ranging from inorganic solid state chemistry, synthetic main group chemistry, biomimetic transition metal complex chemistry for modelling active sites in metalloproteins to metalloenzyme studies, including the isolation and structural characterization by X-ray diffraction analysis. During the 1960s and 1970s he was one of the pioneers in the field of chemical crystallography in Germany. His work in synthesis and spectroscopy involved close cooperation with Achim Müller. He has held guest professorships at the Universities of Stony Brook (US), Strasbourg (France), La Plata (Argentina), Copenhagen/Lyngby (Denmark), and Nagoya (Japan).
Krebs has published more than 750 scientific peer-reviewed papers in international journals; besides a number of review articles, he was editor and co-editor of three books, and he is co-author of 13 patents. He served for several years in leading positions of German and European science organizations, e.g., as a chief referee (IC) for the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Bernt Krebs is an elected member of several academies such as Academia Europaea London, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz, New York Academy of Sciences, and Academia Nacional de Sciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales, Buenos Aires. Among his several scientific honours are the Max Planck Research Award (1992), the Wilhelm Klemm Award of the German Chemical Society GDCh (1997), the Egon Wiberg Lecture Award (2003), and the honorary doctor degree of the University of Mainz (2006).