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Paul Hermann Müller

Paul Hermann Müller also known as Pauly Mueller (January 12, 1899 – October 12, 1965) was a Swiss chemist and winner of the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his 1939 discovery of DDT as an insecticide useful in the control of malaria, yellow fever and many other insect-vector diseases.

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Müller was born in Olten, Solothurn. After receiving his doctorate in 1925 he worked for J. R. Geigy AG in Basel. Here he made his famous discovery in the autumn of 1939.

Müller's Nobel Prize was given "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods." This was the first time that the prize in medicine had been given to someone who was not a physician.

Hermann Müller patented DDT in Switzerland (1940), the United States (1942) and Australia (1943).

Müller died in Basel in 1965.

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Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine

Johannes Fibiger (1926) • Julius Wagner-Jauregg (1927) • Charles Nicolle (1928) • Christiaan Eijkman / Frederick Hopkins (1929) • Karl Landsteiner (1930) • Otto Warburg (1931) • Charles Sherrington / Edgar Adrian (1932) • Thomas Morgan (1933) • George Whipple / George Minot / William Murphy (1934) • Hans Spemann (1935) • Henry Dale / Otto Loewi (1936) • Albert Szent-Györgyi (1937) • Corneille Heymans (1938) • Gerhard Domagk (1939) • Henrik Dam / Edward Doisy (1943) • Joseph Erlanger / Herbert Gasser (1944) • Alexander Fleming / Ernst Chain / Howard Florey (1945) • Hermann Muller (1946) • Carl Cori / Gerty Cori / Bernardo Houssay (1947) • Paul Müller (1948) • Walter Hess / Egas Moniz (1949) • Edward Kendall / Tadeusz Reichstein / Philip Hench (1950)