Richard A. Muller (born January 6, 1944) is an American professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.Muller obtained an A.B. degree at Columbia University (New York) and a Ph.D. degree in physics from University of California, Berkeley. Muller began his career as a graduate student under Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez performing particle physics experiments and working with bubble chambers. During his early years he also helped to co-create accelerator mass spectrometry and made some of the first measurements of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background.Muller was a member of the JASON Defense Advisory Group, which brings together prominent scientists as consultants for the United States Department of Defense.He was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 1982. He also received the Alan T. Waterman Award in 1978 from the National Science Foundation "for highly original and innovative research which has led to important discoveries and inventions in diverse areas of physics, including astrophysics, radioisotope dating, and optics.Muller is a founder and board member of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature ("BEST") project, which has published an independent analysis of the Earth's surface temperature records.

Richard A. Muller research interests focuses to understand the ice ages, dynamics at the core-mantle boundary, patterns of extinction and biodiversity through time, and the processes associated with impact cratering.