William Minot Guertler

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William Minot Guertler (born March 10, 1880 in Hanover ; † March 21, 1959 ibid) was a German metallurgist and professor at the Technical University in Berlin .

Life and career

Guertler was the son of the secret medical councilor Alexander Guertler (1843–1931) and his wife Grace, b. Sedgewick (1858-1931). He was married to Felicitas de la Porte from 1908, with whom he had two daughters.

After school and high school studied Guertler first at the Technical University in his hometown, then in Munich and Göttingen , where he after his doctorate (1904) to Dr. phil. with Gustav Tammann , whose assistant in the new Institute for Inorganic Chemistry at the university became. In 1907 he moved to the Metallhüttenmännische Institut of the TH Berlin, where he worked again as an assistant and then as a research assistant until the outbreak of the First World War . After his habilitation (1908), he worked for a first research stay at MIT in Boston ( Massachusetts ), which was followed by a second in 1911.

During his military service (1914–1918), Guertler was appointed associate professor in 1917 and, after the end of the war, first assistant to the Metallhüttenmännisches Institut, whose acting head he took over from 1921. A lecturer in metallurgy (1930) led to the creation of the Institute for Applied Metallurgy its director from 1933 as a full professor ( professor ) of the Technical University of Berlin was. In 1936 he accepted a position as professor and director of the Institute for Metallurgy and Materials Science at the TH Dresden without giving up the simultaneous management of his Berlin institute, which he held until his retirement in 1945.

Political activities

From 1919 to 1934 Guertler was a member of the Pan-German Association . From 1929 to 1931 he was a member of the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldaten . In December 1931 he joined the NSDAP . In November 1932, Guertler signed a public appeal for the election of Hitler.

Professional services

In the development of metallurgy into an independent branch of science, Guertler made lasting contributions by advancing the constitutional theory of alloys, their systematics and nomenclature, the theoretical foundations and research methods. His goal was to put materials science on a solid theoretical basis, which made it possible to determine materials with the desired properties based on systematic knowledge in advance. His three-volume metallography (published in parts from 1912 to 1935), edited by him and also written in large sections, soon became a standard work. His special research areas included aluminum , its extraction and its alloys, as well as non-ferrous metals as alloying partners.

Guertler had been editor of the International Metallographic Journal since 1911 , from 1919 under the title Zeitschrift für Metallkunde , the official organ of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Metallkunde, which was founded in the same year with his significant involvement . In addition to the approximately 300 articles that he published in scientific journals, he held around 100 patents.

Publications (selection)

  • Introduction to metal science . Vol. 1: The world of metals and technical alloys , Vol. 2: The state diagrams of binary alloys . JA Barth, Leipzig / Berlin 1943; New edition under the title Metallkunde . Borntraeger, Berlin 1954, 1959.
  • Metallography. A detailed instruction and manual of the constitution and the physical, chemical and technical properties of metals and metallic alloys .
Vol. 1: The Constitution (1913), Borntraeger, Berlin 1959;
Vol. 2: The properties of metals and their alloys (1921), Borntraeger, Berlin 1959;
Vol. 3: References to Metallkunde (1922), Borntraeger, Berlin 1959.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Michael Grüttner, Biographical Lexicon for National Socialist Science Policy , Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, p. 67.
personal data
SURNAME Guertler, William Minot
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German metallurgist and professor at the Technical University in Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 1959
Place of death Hanover