Physicist — Karl Alexander Müller (Basel 1927 – Zurich 2023) was a Swiss physicist, for many years a researcher at IBM’s Zurich laboratory. His career is chiefly linked to the study of materials and phase transitions. In 1986, together with his colleague Johannes Georg Bednorz, he discovered superconductivity in a ceramic oxide of lanthanum, barium and copper at a temperature far higher than had previously been thought possible: it was the birth of high-temperature superconductivity, which opened up a vast new field of research. The discovery had an enormous impact and earned the two scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics as early as 1987, just one year after the results were published.
Trivia
The Nobel Prize reached Bednorz and Müller with almost unprecedented speed, just a year after the discovery, such was the enthusiasm it sparked in the physics community.
Theories and contributions
- High-temperature superconductivity — Discovery of superconductivity in ceramic oxides (cuprates) at critical temperatures far higher than those of traditional superconductors.
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