von Klitzing, Klaus

von Klitzing, Klaus, 1943–, German physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Würzburg, 1972. He was a professor at the Technical Univ. of Munich (1980–85) and then director of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics. His discovery that electrical resistance varies by discrete, quantized jumps (the quantum Hall effect) made the extremely precise measurement of electrical resistance possible. For his discovery he was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics.

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