J. Georg Bednorz
Dr. sc. nat., Dr. h.c. mult. IBM Fellow Emeritus
J. Georg Bednorz was born in 1950 in Neuenkirchen, NRW Germany. In 1968 he joined the University of  Münster. During his time as an undergraduate he spent several months in 1972 and 1973 as a summer student at the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory, Switzerland, where in 1974 he also started with the experimental part of his master’s thesis. After completing his thesis in Germany, he obtained his degree in Mineralogy/Crystallography from the University of Münster in 1976. He returned to Zürich in 1977 to start his Ph.D. work at the Solid-State Physics Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH).
After his Ph.D. he joined the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory in 1982 as a research staff member with the task to work on the synthesis and characterization of new oxide materials. From 1983 he focused on conducting oxides to search for superconductivity at temperatures possibly beyond known limits. In 1986 this work resulted in the discovery of high temperature superconductivity in layered copper oxide compounds at unexpectedly high temperatures. This work which he performed in collaboration with his colleague K. Alex Müller was highly recognized, and both were awarded The Nobel Prize in Physics in 1987. In the following Dr. Bednorz received numerous awards and honors. Like the honorary degree of doctor of natural sciences from the Universities of Regensburg-Germany, Salzburg-Austria, Katowice-Poland, Tbilisi-Georgia and the University of Münster-Germany. He is a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Ceramics, Fellow of the American Physical Society and was elected as Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is also Honorary Member of the American Ceramic Society, and the Swiss Physical Society, and Honorary Fellow of the Fudan University, Shanghai, China and the Institute of Physics, Singapore. From the Federal Republic of Germany, he received Grand Cross of the Order of Merit with star and shoulder ribbon.