Hans Müller (physicist)

Hans Müller (born October 27, 1900 in Amriswil , Thurgau ; † June 10, 1965 in Belmont , Massachusetts ) was a Swiss-American physicist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

He is best known for the introduction of the Müller matrix named after him , with the help of which any polarization state of light - described by the Stokes vector - can be converted into another state. Analogous to the Jones formalism for completely polarized light, the mathematical description from the Stokes vector and Müller matrix is ​​also called the Müller formalism ; in English one often finds the term Stokes-Mueller calculus or Stokes-Mueller formalism (Eng. Stokes-Müller formalism ).

life and work

Hans Müller was born in 1900 as the son of the farmer Ernst Müller and Mathilde Müller (nee Meier) in the Swiss village of Amriswil in the canton of Thurgau. After his first school years in Amriswil, he went to a secondary school in Frauenfeld in 1916 , where he received his school- leaving certificate in 1919 . He then began teaching science and mathematics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich .

After graduating with a diploma in 1923, he initially worked for two years as a doctoral student for the later Nobel Prize winner Peter Debye and for Paul Scherrer . At the beginning of 1925, Müller accompanied Debye on a trip to the USA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). However, Müller did not return from this trip to Switzerland, as he accepted a position as a research assistant at MIT's physics faculty. Parallel to his work at MIT, Müller continued to work on his dissertation , which he submitted to the ETH under the title “On the theory of electric charge and the coagulation of colloids”. After receiving his doctorate , he was promoted to assistant professor and in 1935 to associate professor. In 1942 he became a full professor ( full professor ). In 1936 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society .

During his time at MIT, which was interrupted by a brief period as a Guggenheim Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory from 1937 to 1938, Müller continued to work in the field of colloids . He also dealt with the dielectric and optical properties of crystals and investigated the photoelastic effect . During the Second World War , Müller was involved in the development of a standardization for human serum albumin solutions through light scattering . This activity played an important role in the development of the matrix named after him (Müller matrix) in 1943. In 1949 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Hans Mueller died unexpectedly on June 10, 1965 at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts. He left behind his wife Inez and a daughter.

literature

• Kenneth Järrendahl, Bart Kahr: Hans Mueller (1900-1965) . In: JAWoollam Co., Inc. Newsletter . No. 12 , February 22, 2011, p. 8–9 ( online [PDF; accessed February 28, 2015]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kenneth Järrendahl, Bart Kahr: Hans Mueller (1900-1965) . In: JAWoollam Co., Inc. Newsletter . No. 12 , February 22, 2011, p. 8–9 ( online [PDF; accessed February 28, 2015]). online ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Hans Müller: On the theory of the electric charge and the coagulation of colloids . In: Colloid chemical supplements . tape 26 , no. 8–9 , April 1928, pp. 257-311 , doi : 10.1007 / BF02556731 .
3. ↑ Hans Müller: Memorandum on the polarization optics of the photo-elastic shutter . In: Report Number 2 of the OSRD Project OEMsr-576 . 1943.