Paul André Albert (April 14, 1926 – October 26, 2019) was an American metallurgist. In the 1970s and 1980s, he helped to develop the class of doped cobalt-chrome alloys still in use in the manufacture of computer

hard disks A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

. Albert was born in

Van Buren, Maine Van Buren is a town on the Saint John River in Aroostook County, Maine, United States; located across from Saint-Leonard, New Brunswick, Canada. The population was 2,038 at the 2020 census. It is named after U.S. President Martin Van Buren. ...

, to Doctor Armand Albert and Marie Lussier Albert, and was a direct descendant of Canadian pioneer

Pierre Boucher Pierre Boucher de Boucherville (born Pierre Boucher ; 1 August 162219 April 1717) was a French settler, soldier, officer, naturalist, official, governor, and ennobled aristocrat in Nouvelle-France or New France (in what is now Canada). He is a d ...

. Albert earned a BS in physics from the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Orono, Maine, United States. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the Flagship universitie ...

and an ScD in Metallurgy from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

. During his career at Westinghouse in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

, and then at

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Poughkeepsie, New York Poughkeepsie ( ) is a city within the Poughkeepsie (town), New York, Town of Poughkeepsie, New York (state), New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, New York, Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsie i ...

, in

Essex Junction, Vermont Essex Junction is a city in Chittenden County, Vermont, United States. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the population was 10,590. It was incorporated as a village on November 15, 1892. Essex Junction became Vermont’s 10th city on July 1, 2022. ...

, and in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

, Albert co-authored several other patents on the production of anisotropic magnetic films and the means of recording and reading data in them. Albert also contributed to early work on high-density perpendicular recording. After retiring from IBM in 1982, Albert helped to develop research alloys for disk drive manufacturers such as IBM,

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation is an American data storage company headquartered in San Jose, California. Established in 1970, the company is one of the world's largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs). History 1970s Western Digital ...

and Seagate. In 1985, Albert Consulting was incorporated and began arc melting PVD research alloys under the name ACI Alloys. During the 1990s, researchers at ACI Alloys expanded to other

thin film A thin film is a layer of materials ranging from fractions of a nanometer ( monolayer) to several micrometers in thickness. The controlled synthesis of materials as thin films (a process referred to as deposition) is a fundamental step in many ...

markets by developing techniques for the casting of

sputtering In physics, sputtering is a phenomenon in which microscopic particles of a solid material are ejected from its surface, after the material is itself bombarded by energetic particles of a plasma or gas. It occurs naturally in outer space, and c ...

targets made of fully reacted

transition metal In chemistry, a transition metal (or transition element) is a chemical element in the d-block of the periodic table (groups 3 to 12), though the elements of group 12 (and less often group 3) are sometimes excluded. The lanthanide and actinid ...

alloys such as Gallium Nickel and Germanium Antimony Telluride as well as high-purity arc-cast

precious metal Precious metals are rare, naturally occurring metallic chemical elements of high Value (economics), economic value. Precious metals, particularly the noble metals, are more corrosion resistant and less reactivity (chemistry), chemically reac ...

targets and

evaporation (deposition) Evaporation is a common method of thin-film deposition. The source material is evaporated in a vacuum. The vacuum allows vapor particles to travel directly to the target object (substrate), where they condense back to a solid state. Evaporati ...

materials. Albert died on October 26, 2019, at the age of 93. He was remembered as having his "greatest love by far was his family." Albert was survived by his wife, Jeanne (Kachmar) Albert, whom he married in 1955, his eight children, twenty grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Albert, Paul Andre 1926 births American metallurgists People from Van Buren, Maine People from San Jose, California University of Maine alumni New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science alumni 2019 deaths