Paul Hermann Müller
Swiss chemist (1899-1965)
- Fame53.3
- Momentum1.1
- Switzerland rank#222
Source-basedStable
- Fame53.3
- Momentum1.1
- Switzerland rank#222
- Scientists rank#112
- Wikipedia1.6K
Lived 1899–1965, aged 66Switzerland
SwitzerlandSummary
Updated 2026-06-10
He won a Nobel Prize for discovering that DDT kills mosquitoes — then spent the rest of his life watching the world realize what else it killed.
Biography
About
Paul Hermann Müller was a Swiss chemist working in obscurity when, in 1939, he identified the insecticidal properties of DDT. The compound proved devastatingly effective against the mosquitoes that spread malaria and yellow fever, diseases that had shaped the fates of empires and continents. By 1948 the Nobel committee awarded him the prize in Physiology or Medicine — rare recognition for a chemist, rarer still for a discovery whose consequences would turn so thoroughly bitter. Müller died in 1965, three years into the gathering storm that would make his breakthrough synonymous with ecological…
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The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.
Fame
Stable53.3
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum1.1
Historical22.7
Source confidence60.0
Completeness70.0
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- WikidataHigh confidencewikidata · wikidata.org
- WikipediaHigh confidencewikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- Pantheon 2.0High confidencedatabase · pantheon.world
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