Paul Hermann Müller

Paul Hermann Müller ( born January 12, 1899 in Olten / Solothurn, † October 12, 1965 in Basel) was a Swiss chemist.

Paul Hermann Müller's father was employed as a clerk at the Swiss rail. He spent his early childhood in Lenzburg (Canton Aargau ), before the family moved to Basel. Here Paul Hermann Müller attended the Free Protestant primary school, later the lower and the upper one junior high school. Due to poor grades, he left in 1916, the Upper Secondary School and worked for two years as a laboratory technician Cellonitgesellschaft Dreyfuss & Co.. and the company Lonza. From 1918 to 1919 he again visited the high school to take the Matura examination. From the winter semester 1919/1920 on, he majored in chemistry, in physics and a minor in botany at the University of Basel. Müller received his PhD in 1925 under Professor Friedrich Fichter ( 1869-1952 ) Summa cum laude via Chemical and electrochemical oxidation of as.m - xylidine and its mono-and di -methyl derivative.

On May 25, 1925 Paul Hermann Müller began his career as a research chemist for the JR Geigy AG in Basel. Here, he began first with vegetable and synthetic dyes, then with synthetic tanning agents. Only from 1935 onwards, they were looking at Geigy after textiles and pesticides. Müller developed a mercury-free seed dressing. As a member of a working group of the Geigy research director Paul Läuger he realized in autumn 1939, the insecticidal action of DDT.

1948 Müller was awarded "for the discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods (jointed ) " the Nobel Prize for Medicine. It was the first time that this prize was awarded to a non-medical people.

Müller worked for Geigy until his retirement in 1961, from 1946 as Deputy Director, from 1959 as Deputy Director.

Paul Hermann Müller was married to Friedel Rüegsegger since 1927, of the marriage were two sons and a daughter out.

References and Literature

August W. Holldorf: Müller, Paul. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0, pp. 466 f ( digitized ).