J. Georg BednorzBorn 16 May 1950.Johannes Georg Bednorz is a German physicist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize for Physics (with Karl Alex Müller) for their joint discovery of superconductivity in a new class of materials at temperatures higher than had previously been thought attainable. They startled the world by reporting superconductivity in a layered, ceramic material at a then record-high temperature of 33 kelvin (that is 33 degrees above absolute zero, or roughly -460 degrees Fahrenheit). Their discovery set off an avalanche of research worldwide into related materials that yielded dozens of new superconductors, eventually reaching a transition temperature of 135 kelvin. Today, he develops complex oxide compounds with novel crystal structures for possible uses in microelectronics. |
