Friedrich Emil Heyn (5 July 1867 – 1 March 1922) was a German metallurgist who introduced the quantitative metallurgy and is considered a pioneer of

metallography Metallography is the study of the physical structure and components of metals, by using microscopy. Ceramic and polymeric materials may also be prepared using metallographic techniques, hence the terms ceramography, plastography and, collecti ...

techniques including the intercept method where the number of grains cutting a known length of random line segment is used to characterize the fine grain structure of metal alloys. Heyn was born in Annaberg the son of tailor Wilhelm and his wife Johanna Hoyer. The family later moved to

Freiberg Freiberg () is a university and former mining town in Saxony, Germany, with around 41,000 inhabitants. The city lies in the foreland of the Ore Mountains, in the Saxon urbanization axis, which runs along the northern edge of the Elster and ...

where Heyn was educated at the Freiberg Mining School, training under Adolf Ledebur, and went to work at Krupp, Essen followed by Hoerder Ironworks before becoming a lecturer at the School of Engineering at

Gleiwitz Gliwice (; , ) is a city in Upper Silesia, in southern Poland. The city is located in the Silesian Highlands, on the Kłodnica river (a tributary of the Oder River, Oder). It lies approximately 25 km west from Katowice, the regional capital ...

. He visited Sweden in 1890 to study gold mining and he also learned typing and stenography, achieving a speed of 80 to 100 words per minute of dictation. In 1898 he joined the

Technische Hochschule A ''Technische Hochschule'' (, plural: ''Technische Hochschulen'', abbreviated ''TH'') is a type of university focusing on engineering sciences in Germany. Previously, it also existed in Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands (), and Finland (, ) ...

in Charlottenburg (now

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin; also known as Berlin Institute of Technology and Technical University of Berlin, although officially the name should not be translated) is a public university, public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was the first ...

). Here his main work was on examining metal surfaces under a microscope along with

Henry Clifton Sorby Henry Clifton Sorby (10 May 1826 – 9 March 1908) was an English amateur microscopist and geologist. His major contribution was the development of techniques for thin sectioning of rocks and minerals with polarized light under a microscope whi ...

and

Adolf Martens Adolf Martens (Adolf Karl Gottfried Martens; 6 March 1850 in Gammelin – 24 July 1914 in Groß-Lichterfelde) was a German metallurgist and the namesake of the steel structure martensite and the martensitic transformation, a type of diffusionl ...

. In 1904, a Material Testing Office was begun with Heyn as the head of the department of metallography. In 1912 he contributed to the second volume of Martens' Handbook of Metallography. In 1922, inspired by the X-ray diffraction work of

Max von Laue Max Theodor Felix von Laue (; 9 October 1879 – 24 April 1960) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 "for his discovery of the X-ray diffraction, diffraction of X-rays by crystals". In addition to his scientifi ...

, he set up radiographic studies of metals. Heyn knew several European languages. Heyn married Elfriede Papenheim in 1895.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heyn, Emil Academic staff of Technische Universität Berlin 1867 births 1922 deaths German metallurgists