Klaus von Klitzing was born in 1943 in Schroda, today part of Poland. He studied physics at the Technical University in Braunschweig, Germany, and obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Würzburg. “For the discovery of the quantized Hall effect” Professor Klaus von Klitzing received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1985. The Hall effect arises when a magnetic field is applied to a strip of current-conducting material, deflecting the electrons towards one edge. Von Klitzing studied conductivity in extremely thin, two dimensional, electron systems and their changes in response to magnetic fields. He was able to show that the conductivity of the electron systems changes “step-wise”, i.e. it is quantized, as the magnetic field is changed. Von Klitzing became Director and Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in 1985, where he has since been working on semiconductor physics and low dimensional electron systems, nanoelectronics and molecular quantum structures.