K. Alex Müller

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For other people with Karl and Müller, see Karl Müller.
For other people with similar names, see Alexander Müller.

Karl Alexander Müller
ETH Zürich
Known forHigh-temperature superconductivity
SpouseIngeborg Marie Louise Winkler (m. 1956; 2 children)
AwardsMarcel Benoist Prize (1986)
Nobel Prize in Physics (1987)
Wilhelm Exner Medal (1987)[1]
EPS Europhysics Prize (1988)
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsIBM Zürich Research Laboratory
University of Zurich
Battelle Memorial Institute
ThesisParamagnetische Resonanz von Fe3+ in SrTiO3 Einkristallen (1958)
Doctoral advisorGeorg Busch
Doctoral studentsGeorg Bednorz

Karl Alexander Müller (20 April 1927 – 9 January 2023) was a Swiss physicist and

Nobel laureate. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 with Georg Bednorz for their work in superconductivity in ceramic materials
.

Biography

Müller was born in Basel, Switzerland, on 20 April 1927, to Irma (née Feigenbaum) and Paul Müller. His mother is Jewish.[2] His family immediately moved to Salzburg, Austria, where his father was studying music. Alex and his mother then moved to Dornach, near Basel, to the home of his grandparents. Then they moved to Lugano, in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, where he learned to speak Italian fluently. His mother died when he was 11.

In the spring of 1956 Müller married Ingeborg Marie Louise Winkler. They had a son, Eric, in the summer of 1957, and a daughter, Sylvia, in 1960.[3]

Education

After his mother's death, Müller was sent to school at the Evangelical College in Schiers, in the eastern part of Switzerland. Here he studied from 1938 to 1945, obtaining his baccalaureate (Matura).

Müller then enrolled in the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich). He took courses by Wolfgang Pauli, who made a deep impression on him. After receiving his Diplom, he worked for one year, then returned to ETH Zürich for a PhD, submitting his thesis at the end of 1957.

Career

Müller joined the

University of Zürich. In 1963 he accepted an offer as a research staff member at the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon, where he remained until his retirement. In parallel, he maintained his affiliation with University of Zurich where he was appointed professor in 1970. From 1972 to 1985 Müller was manager of the ZRL physics department. In 1982 he became an IBM Fellow. He received an honorary doctorate from Technical University of Munich and University of Geneva. In 1987 (before winning the Nobel Prize) he got an honorary degree (laurea honoris causa) in Physics from the University of Pavia
.

Research

Müller in 2002

For his undergraduate diploma work, Müller studied under G. Busch. He worked on the

Hall Effect in gray tin, a semimetal
.

Between his

graduate studies, he worked for one year in the Department of Industrial Research at ETH on the Eidophor
large-scale display system.

At IBM his research for almost 15 years centered on SrTiO3 (strontium titanate) and related perovskite compounds. He studied their photochromic properties when doped with various transition-metal ions; their chemical binding, ferroelectric and soft-mode properties; and the critical and multicritical phenomena of their structural phase transitions. Important highlights of this research have been published in a book written together with Tom Kool from the University of Amsterdam (publisher: World Scientific).

Death

Müller died on 9 January 2023, at the age of 95 in Zürich.[4][5]

Nobel Prize–winning work

Main article: High-temperature superconductivity

In the early 1980s, Müller began searching for substances that would become superconductive at higher temperatures. The highest

YBCO
(T'c = 92 K).

They reported their discovery in the June 1986 issue of

YBCO, triggering a stampede of scientific interest exemplified by the 1987 "Woodstock of physics", at which Müller was a featured presenter.[8]

In 1987 Müller and Bednorz were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics—the shortest time between the discovery and the prize award for any scientific Nobel.

Other honors

See also

  • Timeline of low-temperature technology

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Karl Alexander Müller.
  1. ^ Editor, ÖGV. (2015). Wilhelm Exner Medal. Austrian Trade Association. ÖGV. Austria.
  2. ^ "Jewish Nobel Prize Winners in Physics". www.jinfo.org. Retrieved 29 March 2023.
  3. ^ Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse (19 Nov 2009).
  4. Universität Zürich
    , 17 January 2023.
  5. ^ Physik Nobelpreisträger Karl Alex Müller stirbt mit 95 Jahren. In: Swissinfo.ch, 17. Januar 2023.
  6. ^ Holton, Gerald. The Scientific Imagination, p. xxv (Harvard University Press, 1998).
  7. S2CID 118314311
    .
  8. ^ Chang, Kenneth (6 March 2007). "Physicists Remember When Superconductors Were Hot". New York Times. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
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