Georg Müller (agricultural scientist)

Georg Müller (1917 to 2004) was a Hungarian born German agricultural scientist, born in Budaörs near Budapest into the region's ethnic German minority. He studied agronomy in Budapest until 1942, worked as a plant protection inspector, and after captivity as a Soviet prisoner of war settled in Saxony in 1947. In 1950 he became a department head responsible for potato breeding at the national Agriculture and Plant Institute at Müncheberg, took his doctorate at Humboldt University in 1952 or 1953 with a dissertation on raising the starch content of potato types, and gained his habilitation in soil sciences in 1956. From 1958 he taught at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, directed its institute for Soil Sciences and Microbiology from 1961 and was University Rector from 1964 to 1968, then moved with the institute to Halle in 1968 and retired in 1982. His book Soil Biology (1965) treated soil bacteriology, microbiology and zoology together and was welcomed across Europe and in the United States.