Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Walther Müller
Walther Müller was a German physicist, most well known for his improvement of Hans Geiger's counter for ionizing radiation, now known as the Geiger-Mueller tube.
He was born September 6, 1905 in Hannover, Germany and studied physics, chemistry and philosophy at the University of Kiel. In 1925 he became the first PhD student of Hans Geiger, who had just got a professorship in Kiel. Their work on ionization of gases by collision lead to the invention of the Geiger-Mueller counter, a now indispensable tool for measuring radioactive radiation.
After some time as professor at the University of Tübingen he worked for the rest of his professional life as industrial physicist (i. e. a physicist working in industrial R&D) in Germany, then as advisor for the Australian Ministry of Economy, and then as industrial physicist in the USA, where he also founded a company to manufacture Geiger-Mueller tubes.
He died December 4, 1979, in Walnut Creek, California.
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