Rudolf Ludwig Mössbauer (born 31.01.1929) is a German experimental physicist and a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. He was born in Munich. He graduated from the Munich Higher Technical School (1955). In 1955-57 he worked at the Max Planck Institute (Heidelberg), in 1958 —60 at the Higher Technical School in Munich, in 1960—64 at the California Institute of Technology (a professor from 1961), in 1964 — 72 he was a professor at the Technical University of Munich, and from 1972 he has been director of the Laue — Langevin Institute in Grenoble.
His work was in the fields of gamma-ray spectroscopy, nuclear physics and solid-state physics. In his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, studying the resonant absorption and scattering of gamma quanta, he discovered in 1958 nuclear gamma resonance without recoil of the nucleus. The phenomenon came to be called the “Mössbauer effect” and is now widely used in various fields of science and technology. For the discovery of the effect that bears his name he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1961.
He is a member of a number of academies of sciences and scientific societies, in particular a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1982). The W. Röntgen Prize (1961). The E. Cresson Medal (1961) and others.