Hermann Müller

(b. Mannheim, 18 May 1876; d. 20 Mar. 1931) German; Chancellor of Germany 1920, 1928 – 30, SPD chairman 1919 – 27 The son of a factory manager, Müller had been forced to leave grammar school early on the death of his father. He took up an apprenticeship as a salesman where he got involved in union activities. He joined the SPD and by 1899 was editor of a small SPD paper. Like Ebert he was known more for his organizational talent than for his speaking ability and in 1905 he was a candidate for the post of secretary of the SPD, but was beaten by Ebert. He owed some of his success to backing from Bebel. Because of his foreign language skills Müller was delegated to socialist congresses abroad. His most significant mission was to end in failure. In July 1914 he was sent to discuss the international situation with the French parliamentary group. Their leader Jean Jaurès was murdered while Müller was still travelling and he arrived only to take part in the funeral. The two parties were unable to take joint action against the approaching war.

Müller remained with the majority SPD after the left-pacifist split in 1916, voting for the defence of Germany, but against annexations. When the revolution came, he was appointed Foreign Minister and then Chancellor to 1920. His popularity in the SPD was shown by his re-election year by year as party chairman from 1919 to 1927.

The break-up, in March 1930, of the coalition government led by Müller marked a decisive turning point in German politics, from which the democrats were unable to recover. The coalition fell apart because its members could not agree on measures to finance the unemployment insurance fund. The governments which followed it were less and less representative of the Reichstag until Hitler was asked to form his government in 1933.

Swiss chemist (1899–1965)

Müller, who was born in Olten, Switzerland, was educated at the University of Basel where he obtained his PhD in 1925. From then until 1961 when he retired Müller worked for the Swiss dye firm of J. R. Geigy as a research chemist.

In 1935 Müller began looking for a potent and persistent insecticide that would nevertheless be harmless to plants and warm-blooded animals. Five years later he took out a patent on a chemical that had first been prepared in 1873. The compound was dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, which was soon abbreviated to DDT. It turned out to be cheap and simple to manufacture, requiring only chlorine, ethanol, benzene, and sulfuric acid, all of which were available in bulk from the heavy chemical industry.

It soon proved its effectiveness as an insecticide during World War II. Müller thought it to be toxic only against insects and soon extravagant claims were being made about the elimination of arthropod-borne diseases. Before long, however, the insects appeared to be more resilient than chemists had supposed and DDT more destructive of life and ecosystems than they imagined. Several advanced countries were to ban it.

Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1948 for his discovery.

(b Zürich, 19 June 1898). Swiss composer. He studied with Jarnach and Andreae at the Zürich Conservatory (1917-19), where he later taught from 1927 to 1969, and in Paris and Berlin. Influenced by Reger, he developed a neo-Baroque style characterized by advanced but tonal harmony and wrote choral and organ music, concertos, chamber music etc.

The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller (1899-1965) is noted for his discovery of the insecticidal powers of DDT.

Paul Müller was born on Jan. 12, 1899, at Olten, Switzerland, the son of an official of the Swiss Federal Railways. The family soon moved to Basel. Encouraged by his father, Müller performed experiments at home with chemicals bought at a local pharmacy. After a brief spell as a laboratory technician Müller entered Basel University. In 1925 he was awarded a doctorate for a thesis on the chemical and electrochemical oxidation of a substance known as asymmetrical m-xylidine and some of its derivatives. That year he joined the firm of J.R. Geigy as research chemist.

Müller's first research interest at Geigy was in the field of leather tanning, and he was able to develop several synthetic tans with good fastness to light. He also developed an interest in the conservation of hides and in the associated problem of rendering wool resistant to attack by moths. Although the firm had by this time considerable expertise in mothproofing textiles on an industrial scale, Müller believed that an alternative approach to the problem was necessary. Hitherto the insecticides used had been oral poisons. Müller proposed a search for insecticides that could act by mere contact, and for this he did his own biological testing, which was unusual for a chemist. Realizing that compounds with a - CCL₃ group (for example, chloroform) were often lethal to insects, he examined several of these until, in 1939, he came to DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), which, although known since 1873, was now revealed as a far more effective contact insecticide than any other and was easily manufactured.

This discovery came at a crucial moment in history. DDT, with its lethal action on malaria-carrying mosquitoes, played a vital role in maintaining the health of the Allied armies in the Far East. As a routine precaution, the shirts of British and United States troops were impregnated with DDT. Its first use on a large scale was at Naples in 1943, when a typhus epidemic was brought under control within 3 weeks. Today, discovery of pesticide residues in animal bodies has revealed a toxic hazard unsuspected in Müller's day, and controls in the use of DDT and other pesticides are being demanded.

For his discovery Müller received the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1948. In 1962 he was given an honorary doctorate at Thessalonica (Salonika) in recognition of the valuable effects of DDT in the Mediterranean area.

Müller became deputy chairman of Geigy and assistant research director of its pesticides division. He died in October, 1965.

Further Reading

A brief biographical sketch of Müller is in H. Schück and others, Nobel: The Man and His Prizes (trans. 1951; 2d rev. ed. 1962), and Eduard Farber, Great Chemists (1961).