Norbert Lütkenhaus studied at the RWTH Aachen and the LMU Munich, from which he graduated with a thesis in general relativity. He then changed fields to study quantum optics and quantum cryptography under the supervision of Stephen M. Barnett at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, UK. In 1996 he obtained his PhD. After postdoc positions in Innsbruck (Peter Zoller and Ignacio Cirac) and the Helsinki Institute of Physics (Kalle-Antti Suominen), he worked for MagiQ Technologies (New York) to initiate the project of commercial realization of quantum key distribution. Returning to academia in 2001, he built up and led an Emmy-Noether Research Group at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, during which time he did his habiliation (2004).

Currently he is Associate Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Waterloo and a member of the Institute of Quantum Computing.