Gustav Hüttig studied chemistry at the University of Leipzig and was then an assistant at the Clausthal Mining Academy in Lower Saxony. This was followed by periods at the technical universities in Jena, Leipzig and Bonn. In 1926 he was appointed full professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry at the then German Technical University in Prague.
In 1946, the Graz University of Technology appointed him head of the Institute of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry. There he devoted himself to building up the institute, which under his leadership once again conducted cutting-edge research. He also resumed his publication activities, which had been interrupted by the first post-war period. In total, he published more than 280 papers during his scientific career, dealing with more than thirty different subfields of organic, inorganic and physical chemistry. Among other things, Hüttig researched the mordanting capacity of dioxyanthraquinone and the relationship between atomic volume and coordination number.