CZOCHRALSKI, Jan

After he completed schooling at a specialised school in Kcynia, he started working in A. Herbrand’s pharmacy and drugstore in Berlin. He left it in 1906 for Kunheim & Co.'s laboratory in Berlin-Niederschöneweide, and in 1907 left that for an AEG concern laboratory in Berlin. In 1908 he obtained the title chemical engineer at an accredited technical college in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Later he ran the laboratory for checking the purity of iron ore and other metals; there they also researched metals and alloys in different phases of formation. In 1917 he started working for the A. G. metallurgic company in Frankfurt am Mein, where he built a research laboratory for the chemical and physical research of the mechanic and electrical properties of aluminium alloys. Research conducted in this laboratory brought him worldwide fame. In 1919 he was one of the cofounders of a German metallurgic company, which chose him as its president in 1924. In 1928 he returned to Poland for good – he was invited by the then president Ignacy Mościcki. He was exceptionally granted Polish citizenship, despite the fact that the German government did not agree with him denouncing his rights as German citizen. Thanks to his German patents, he made a fortune, which enabled him to build a residential house in his birth place of Kcynia. He invested a lot of money into Polish industry and a part of his fortune for social purposes.
In 1929 he accepted the position of professor of metallurgy and metal sciences at the Faculty of Chemistry at Warsaw’s Technical College; he also received the title Doctor of Science. Czochralski was closely connected with the development of the Industrial Chemistry Research Institute, where he set up an efficient metallurgy department.
In 1930 he was named full professor of metallurgy and metal sciences at the Faculty of Chemistry at Warsaw’s Technical College.
In 1933 he was in charge of the Institute of Metallurgy and Metal Sciences, which was closely connected to the Ministry of Defence. He was also appointed technical adviser to the Ministry. In 1932 he became one of the cofounders of the Military Technical Association and its president from 1932 to 1935.

One of his biggest achievements (in 1916) was upgrading the process for acquiring single crystal metals. The process was based on sinking and lifting the single crystals with precisely determined speed and turning them evenly around the axis of the crystal, which forms the crystallisation nucleus within a melted and spectrally clean single crystal of equal chemical composition at a constant temperature. The temperature always borders the aggregation state between solid and liquid.
This method enabled the acquisition of large single crystals of different metals and their alloys. C. K. Teal and B. Little first used this method for mass production in 1950. In the second half of the 20th century the method that Czochralski upgraded was recognised as one of the most economical and suitable methods for the electrical industry.
Czochralski owned and co-owned numerous technical patents, such as the „Silumin “ patent, that is, an alloy of aluminium and silicon, or a metal called „Bahnmetall B“, which was used for building railways.
He also applied research methods to his field of study, such as: measuring the speed of metal crystallisation; crystallisation diagrams; analysis of the heating process in order to estimate the potential for the improvement of material; analysis of the electrical resistance of foreign bodies and matrix, as well as quantitative determination of nonmetal foreign bodies in iron and steel; analysis of the static and dynamic characteristics of the contact between the needle and metal (under a so-called radiomicroscope) to prove and identify foreign bodies, for single crystal orientation with the help of the „Ausser X-ray method“ (borrowed from mineralogy). He was also interested in new agents for creating reactions such as etching gold. He implemented an X-ray procedure for metallurgic analysis, which was based on research on the influence of deformation on the diffracted picture. Czochralski published around 90 publications, including handbooks.