Oral History: K. Alex Müller (2015)

Müller was born in Basel, however, raised in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland since his parents separated soon after his birth. After the early death of his mother he spent his boyhood and adolescence in the Swiss mountains in Schiers, close to the famous skiing resort of Klosters. After the Matura in 1945 he studied physics at the ETH Zürich and finished his thesis in 1960 in the group of Prof. Busch with a work on the double perovskite SrTiO3. This compound was intensively investigated by him, and he achieved major success with breakthrough discoveries in this field. The following two years he joined the Batelle Institute in Geneva working in spin resonance. Meanwhile the IBM research center in Rüschlikon was founded where he was offered a position as scientific member to explore the field of ferroelectricity where he performed brilliantly. During a two years residence at IBM in the United States he developed interest in superconductivity which he focused on in the following years. The Nobel Prize award in 1987 crowned this work but did not finalize his scientific activities which were centered on the exploration of its origin. Alongside he was, and still is, active in the field of perovskites, including manganites and ferroelectrics.

The interview was conducted during a trip to Geneva and a short stay there. While his scientific career is well documented, his emphasis in this interview was on personal events which influenced him and on activities which are less known, namely his affinity to sports. Almost all his life long he was a dedicated skier with excellent accomplishments even being in an age above 80. In addition, he has a pronounced affection to swimming which he is still practicing today. These outside of science activities are of fundamental importance to him since they helped him to get back to the roots.