This biography highlights the historical importance of Ferdinand Redtenbacher for the evolution of mechanical engineering to technical science in the 19th century. The presentation substantially follows [6,15] with regard to personal biographical details by Ferdinand Redtenbacher himself, [1,22-33], essays by contemporary witnesses in [7,9-12,34] (but not so much [2], see [40]) as well as historical appraisals in [13,14,37,38]. It starts with a description of his life covering his childhood and early teens in his home in Upper Austria, through the culmination of his professional career as a professor and the director of the Polytechnic school in Karlsruhe, Germany (today the University of Karlsruhe). Of particular interest is the question of which external circumstances and characters helped to establish the path of Redtenbacher's lifework and how his influence pushed the German manufacturing engineering in the 20th century and even today. Finally this paper explores Redtenbacher's contributions to mechanism and machine science by means of his construction of kinematic models for teaching. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.