Allais, Maurice    Economics, 1988 Altman, Sidney   Chemistry, 1989 Arber, Werner    Medicine, 1978 Arrow, Kenneth J.    Economics, 1972 Baltimore, David    Medicine, 1975 Becker, Gary S.    Economics, 1992 Black, James W.    Medicine, 1988 Brown, Lester R. Buchanan, James M.    Economics, 1986 Charpak, Georges    Physics, 1992 Dahrendorf, Ralf Dausset, Jean    Medicine, 1980 Debreu, Gérard    Economics, 1983 de Duve, Christian    Medicine, 1974 Dulbecco, Renato    Medicine, 1975 Ernst, Richard R.    Chemistry, 1991 Esaki, Leo    Physics, 1973 Fo, Dario    Literature, 1997 Gell-Mann, Murray    Physics, 1969 Glashow, Sheldon Lee    Physics, 1979 Guillemin, Roger C.L.    Medicine, 1977 Hoffmann, Roald    Chemistry, 1981 Jacob, François    Medicine, 1965 Kindermans, Jean-Marie    Peace 1999 Klein, Lawrence R.    Economics, 1980 Kroto, Harold W.    Chemistry, 1996 Lederman, Leon M.    Physics, 1988 Lehn, Jean-Marie    Chemistry, 1987 Leontief, Wassily    Economics, 1973 Levi Montalcini, Rita    Medicine, 1986 Lown, Bernard    Peace, 1985 Marchetti, Cesare Modigliani, Franco    Economics, 1985 Molina, Mario J.    Chemistry, 1995 Müller, K. Alex    Physics, 1987 Mullis, Kary B.    Chemistry, 1993 Mundell, Robert A.    Economics, 1999 Murray, Joseph E.    Medicine, 1990 Nakicenovic, Nebojsa Nishi, Kazuhiko North, Douglass C.    Economics, 1993 Olah, Geoge A.    Chemistry, 1994 Pauli, Gunter Paz, Octavio    Literature, 1990 Penzias, Arno    Physics, 1978 Pérez Esquivel, Adolfo    Peace, 1980 Polanyi, John C.    Chemistry, 1986 Porter, George    Chemistry, 1967 Prigogine, Ilya    Chemistry, 1977 Richardson, Robert C.    Physics, 1996 Richter, Burton    Physics, 1976 Rifkin, Jeremy Rodbell, Martin    Medicine, 1994 Rohrer, Heinrich    Physics, 1986 Rota, Gian-Carlo Rotblat, Joseph    Peace, 1995 Rowland, F. Sherwood    Chemistry, 1995 Rubbia, Carlo    Physics, 1984 Sharpe, William F.    Economics, 1990 Skilbeck, Malcolm Soyinka, Wole    Literature, 1986 Steinberger, Jack    Physics, 1988 Ting, Samuel C.C.    Physics, 1976 Tobin, James    Economics, 1981 Touraine, Alain Walcott, Derek    Literature, 1992 Watson, James D.    Medicine, 1962 Weinberg, Steven    Physics, 1979 Wiesel, Elie    Peace, 1986 Zewail, Ahmed H.    Chemistry, 1999 Zinkernagel, Rolf M. Medicine, 1996

Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1987 K. Alex Müller was born in Basle in 1927. After a childhood spent in Austria and Canton Ticino he entered a college in German-speaking Switzerland, where he became a passionate skier and builder of radios, which sparked his interest in becoming an electrical engineer. He enrolled at the famous Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Z) in Zurich in the autumn of 1945. The news of the atomic bomb prompted him to study nuclear physics, where his mentors included Wolfgang Pauli. After finishing his Ph.D. thesis on paramagnetic resonance in 1958, Müller accepted a post at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Geneva, where he joined a group conducting research on magnetic resonance. Since 1962 he has taught at the University of Zurich, where he is currently Professor Emeritus of Physics. In 1963 he was hired as a researcher at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory (Rüschlikon), where he still works. His studies in fundamental physics have primarily focused on structural phase transitions, critical and multicritical phenomena and the behaviour of ferroelectric materials at low temperatures. His discoveries in the field of high-temperature superconductors have earned him numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987 (with J. Georg Bednorz). In addition to his work on the fundamental processes of superconductivity, in recent years Müller has developed a growing interest in philosophical questions. He is a member of various organisations, including the Swiss and American Physical Societies and the United States, Russian, Slovene, and Polish academies of science.

1995 High temperature superconductivity: on the verge of commercialisation