BUZEK, Jerzy Jan

After finishing the gymnasium in Cieszyn in 1895, he studied at the Mining College in Leoben (Austria), where he earned the title mining and metallurgical engineer with his diploma in 1899. From 1899 to 1911, he worked in the metallurgical facility in Třinec, where he began researching the process of melting in cupolas. The research encompassed the dependence of the strength of the cupola and the use of coke on the blast air needed to burn 1 kg of coke. B. developed mathematical rules by calculating the best quantity of the blast air in the cupola procedure. This quantity amounts to approximately 100 Nm3/m2 of the cupola's section per minute, the so-called B number (Buzek number). He published the results of his research in 1908/09 in several articles – in contributions to the Mining and Metallurgy Review (Bergbau- und Hüttenwesen-Rundschau) (1908–1909), and in the German newspaper Steel and Iron (Stahl und Eisen). This also won him recognition abroad. In 1911 and 1916, he was entrusted to treat two chapters of an important book in three tomes, namely the Handbook on Casting Iron and Steel (Handbuch der Eisen- und Stahlgießerei). From 1911 to 1939, he worked at a foundry in Węgierska Górka – first as the manager, then from 1913 onwards as the director, and from 1923 onwards as the director-general of the „Węgierska Górka” public company. He expanded and modernised the foundry – he oriented the production to the manufacture of casts for cast iron pipes with the centrifugal method. In 1929, the foundry manufactured the largest pipes in the world at that time, 5 m long and 1.2 m in diameter. From 1927 onwards, B. lectured on casting and the technology of blast furnaces at the Department of Metallurgy of the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Krakow. In 1934, he habilitated with the work Teoretyczne uwagi o budowie i pędzeniu płomienników odlewniczych, which he presented at the International Foundry Congress in Prague in 1933. In 1935, he became full professor of metallurgy and casting at the Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Krakow. In 1934, B. became an associate member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He was also a member of the Academy of Technical Sciences, of the Council of the Union of Industrialists in Krakow, and of the Normalisation Committee at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and a councillor of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Krakow.