As with all great people, it is impossible to summarise his life's work in a short paragraph. All who knew him would certainly agree that he was one of the most energetic and positive individuals active in the field. He received his PhD in Vienna in 1972 and was habilitated there in 1979. Five years later, in 1984, he was appointed full professor and became head of the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Vienna, a position he held for almost three decades.
Initially focusing on topics related to childhood neurology (together with the late Andreas Rett), as well as rethinking the role of anthropology in the National Socialist era and the inadequacy of the concept of race, he opened his collaborative spectrum considerably in 1991 when he became the director of the Tyrolean Iceman research committee, which he organised tirelessly over the next decade. He soon became interested in mummy research in Peru and Siberia, as well as the technical developments of the 1990s that enabled a whole new approach to studying mummies and hominin fossils: Virtual Anthropology. Alongside distinguished colleagues such as Chris Stringer, Glenn Conroy, Dean Falk and Phillip Tobias, he devoted himself to the human evolutionary questions that had long captivated him.
One of the highlights of Seidler’s career was his organisation of paleoanthropological fieldwork in the Somali region of Ethiopia, which began in 2000 and continued for nearly a decade. Beyond his academic accomplishments, he was an inspiring teacher, a dedicated mentor to young scholars at every stage, and an enthusiastic science communicator.
For around one decade he was in the management team of the Faculty of Life Sciences, two periods as vice-Dean and for 3 periods he served as Dean of the Faculty.
He received numerous honorary doctorates and professorships, was a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Austrian Golden Cross of Honour for Science and Art. In his later years, Horst withdrew from public life and settled in Ramingstein, Salzburg, his favourite corner of Austria.
Vienna, 5th January 2026
