K. Alex Müller changed how we think about electricity. He died in Zürich on January 9, 2023, at the age of 95. Born in Basel in 1927, this Swiss physicist did not just study matter. He forced it to behave differently.
He shared the 1987 Nobel Prize for Physics with J. Georg Bednorz. Their achievement was specific. They found superconductivity in certain substances at higher temperatures than anyone thought possible.
Before Müller, the limits of physics felt fixed. The highest transition temperature—the point where a material stops resisting electricity—was about 23 Kelvin. That is -250 degrees Celsius. Or -418 degrees Fahrenheit. It is cold enough to freeze nitrogen instantly.
Müller had the credentials to challenge this ceiling. He earned his doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1958. By 1963, he was at the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory. He eventually headed the physics department there. He became an IBM fellow in 1982.
He specialized in ceramic compounds called oxides.
The Search for Higher Transition Temperatures
In the early 1980s, Müller started looking for a way to break the 23 K barrier. He wanted substances that conducted electricity with zero resistance. Not at near-absolute zero. At higher temperatures.
It required a different approach.
Müller recruited Bednorz in 1983. Their goal was systematic. They would test various oxides. Recent studies had hinted these materials might be suitable. They were not following the crowd. They were looking where others had dismissed.
The results came in 1986.
Müller and Bednorz succeeded with a specific barium-lanthanum-copper oxide. They achieved superconductivity at 35 K. That is -238 degrees Celsius. It was only 12 Kelvin higher than the previous record.
It sounds small. It was massive.
Why High-Temperature Superconductivity Matters
This discovery triggered a global shift. Scientists everywhere started experimenting with oxides. They were no longer chasing impossible dreams. They were chasing a new reality.
Within a year, transition temperatures approached 100 K. That is -173 degrees Celsius. The leap from 23 K to 100 K made practical applications conceivable.
Consider the economic implications of this shift. Superconductivity allows for the generation and transmission of electric power with no energy loss. Before Müller and Bednorz, this was a lab curiosity. After their discovery, it became a tangible goal.
The intense research wave they started did not just produce papers. It raised the prospect of a grid that does not waste energy. A feat with important economic implications.
We still rely on materials that lose energy as heat. The work of these two men showed the path. The temperature ceiling is not a wall. It is a door.
