Klaus von Klitzing (1985)

Klaus von Klitzing

Biography

Klaus von Klitzing was born in Schroda, Posen on June 28th 1943. After the escape from Posen the family arrived in Lower Saxony in 1945. Von Klitzing finished high-school in Quakenbrück in 1962 and started to study physics at the Technical University of Braunschweig. He finished his studies in 1969.

After that he transferred to Würzburg, where he worked with professor Landwehr until 1980. During that time he did his Ph.D. (1972) and habilitated (1978). Between 1975 and 1978 he worked in Oxford and between 1979 and 1980 he worked at the 'High Magnetic Field Laboratory' in Grenoble. There he made his important discovery of the quantum hall effect. In 1980 von Klitzing accepted a chair at the Technical University of Munich, until he transferred to the 'Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research' in Stuttgart in 1985. In the same year he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the quantum hall effect and became honorary professor at the University of Stuttgart. Klaus von Klitzing is still researching in Stuttgart today.