B. Sc. in process chemistry, Antwerp, Belgium, 1965. Most of his career was dedicated to process engineering, primarily in manufacturing of paints and inks.

In retirement he developed a deep understanding of the carbon cycle. Working independently, he derived the approximate effective residence time for additional CO2 added to the atmosphere and he achieved about the same figure that Dick Lindzen, Roy Spencer and others had calculated (about fifty years).

Ferdinand is one of the top experts on the source of the increase in carbon dioxide over the last century or more. He has conclusively determined via multiple avenues of scientific parameters that our increase of about 140 ppm since the Industrial Revolution (since 1850) is from human sources, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.