K. Alex M\"uller: Science between ferroelectricity and superconductivity

Abstract

K. Alex M\"uller started his scientific career in 1958 when he was about thirty-one years old. After his wife passed away and being in his nineties, his interest in physics gradually faded. In those years shortly before he passed away, on January 9, 2023, he was no longer interested in superconductivity or ferroelectricity, he had become essentially devoted to philosophy and psychology. It is of note that altogether his research in physics comprised sixty years of activity. Almost in the middle of this period, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in ceramic copper oxides in 1987. This discovery made him truly famous. While most researchers are familiar with his Nobel Prize work, many are not aware of the fact that K. Alex M\"uller was already an acclaimed scientist before that and highly respected in the field of perovskite oxides, ferroelectricity, structural phase transitions, Jahn-Teller physics, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and, especially so in the properties of SrTiO3.