K. Alex Müller

In 1956, Müller married Ingeborg Marie Louise Winkler. Two children were born to them; a boy in 1957 and a girl in 1960. His son, Eric, is a dentist, and his daughter, Silvia, is a kindergarten teacher.

He has often cited that his wife is the main driving force in his life with 30 years of encouragement. She has always shown an interest in his work and been a good companion and mentor, he states.

K. Alex Müller was born in Basel, Switzerland on April 20, 1927, to Irma Feigenbaum and Paul Müller. After his birth, the family moved to Salzburg, Austria. The family lived there for a few years while his father studied music.

Müller and his mother moved to Dornach to live with his grandparents. Later, they moved to Lugano where he attended school and learned Italian.

His mother died in 1938 when he was 11 years old. He and his father then moved to Schiers, in the eastern part of Switzerland.

At Schiers, he was enrolled in the Evangelical College from 1938 to 1945. He graduated with his baccalaureate (Matura).

He showed an early fascination with radio and electronics which was supported by his wealthy family. He was also active in sports with a particular interest in alpine skiing.

When he was 19 years old, K. Alex Müller did his basic military training in the Swiss Army. He worked for a year in the Department of Industrial Research (AFIF) of the ETH after his diploma.

He joined the Battelle Memorial Institute in Geneva in 1958 and soon became the manager of a magnetic resonance group. He held on to the post till 1963.

In 1963, he joined the research staff at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Ruschlikon and continued there until his retirement. He began studying the properties of a class of compounds called ‘perovskites’, with Walter Berlinger. His research spanned for over 15 years and made significant contributions to the world of Physics.

The University of Geneva made him a Professor in 1970 where he worked in parallel with IBM. His work with perovskites boosted his reputation with the IBM lab and he was made the head of the laboratory's physics department in 1972.

During an 18-month sabbatical in the United States, he began working on solid-state physics and superconductivity. He returned to Ruschlikon in 1980 and continued his work.

K. Alex Müller worked with Georg Bednorz to test superconductivity at higher temperatures and achieved it in 1986. Though skeptical at first, many physicists began to embrace this discovery due to its large-scale practical applications. This led to a session, now known as the Woodstock of Physics, which dealt with these properties of superconductors and their numerous applications.