Home > Walther Müller

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 gasFor other meanings see gas (disambiguation). A gas is one of the phases of matter. Gases are, like liquids, fluids: they have the ability to flow and do not resist deformation. Unlike liquids, however, unconstrained gases do not occupy a fixed volume, butes by collisionPhysical collision Dynamics In physics, collision means the action of bodies striking or coming together ( touching). Collisions involve forces (there is a change in velocity). Collisions can be elastic, meaning they conserve energy and momentum, inelasti lead to the invention of the Geiger-Mueller counterA Geiger counter measures ionizing radiation. Geiger counters can detect photons, alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, but not neutrons. The sensor is a Geiger-Muller tube, a gas-filled tube that briefly conducts electricity when a particle or photon of radi, a now indispensible tool for measuring radioactive radiationRadiation generally means the transmission of objects or information from a source into a surrounding medium or destination. Within physics, related concepts are: Ionizing radiation is a stream of particles (photons or other particles) with sufficient ene.

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.