Throughout instances of political turmoil, historical past usually will get rewritten, erased, or misplaced. That’s what occurred to the legacy of Jan Czochralski, a Polish chemist whose contributions to semiconductor manufacturing had been expunged after World Struggle II.
In 1916 he invented a way for rising single crystals of semiconductors, metals, and artificial gems. The method, now referred to as the Czochralski method, permits scientists to have extra management over a semiconductor’s high quality.
After the struggle ended, Czochralski was falsely accused by the Polish government of collaborating with the Germans and betraying his nation, in line with an article printed by the International Union of Crystallography. The allegation apparently ended his educational profession as a professor on the Warsaw University of Technology and led to the erasure of his identify and work from the varsity’s information.
He died in 1953 in obscurity in his hometown of Kcynia.
The Czochralski technique was honored in 2019 with an IEEE Milestone for enabling the improvement of semiconductor units and trendy electronics. Administered by the IEEE History Center and supported by donors, the Milestone program acknowledges excellent technical developments world wide.
Impressed by the IEEE recognition, Czochralski’s grandson Fred Schmidt and his great-grandnephew Sylwester Czochralski launched the JanCZ project. The initiative, which goals to teach the general public about Czochralski’s life and scientific affect, maintains two web sites—one in English and the opposite in Polish.
“Discovering the [IEEE Milestone] plaque modified my whole mission,” Schmidt says. “It impressed me to have interaction with Poland, my household historical past, and my grandfather’s story [on] a extra private degree. The [Milestone] is a vital award of validation and recognition. It’s a giant a part of what I’m constructing my whole case and my story round as I promote the Jan Czochralski legacy and historical past to the Western world.”
Schmidt, who lives in Texas, is in search of to provide a biopic, translate a Polish biography to English, and switch the chemist’s former properties in Kcynia and Warsaw into museums. The Jan Czochralski Remembrance Basis has been established by Schmidt to assist fund the tasks.
The lifetime of the Polish chemist
Earlier than Czochralski’s delivery in 1885, Kcynia grew to become a part of the German Empire in 1871. Though his household recognized as Polish and spoke the language at residence, they couldn’t publicly acknowledge their tradition, Schmidt says.
When it got here time for Czochralski to go to college, slightly than attend one in Warsaw, he did what many Germans did on the time: He attended one in Berlin.
After graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in metallic chemistry in 1907 from the Königlich Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin), he joined Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft in Berlin as an engineer.
Czochralski experimented with supplies to search out new formulations that would enhance {the electrical} cables and equipment throughout the early electrical age, in line with a Material World article.
Whereas investigating the crystallization charges of metallic, Czochralski by chance dipped his pen right into a pot of molten tin as a substitute of an inkwell. A tin filament fashioned on the pen’s tip—which he discovered fascinating. By way of analysis, he proved that the filament was a single crystal. His discovery prompted him to experiment with the majority manufacturing of semiconductor crystals.
His paper on what he known as the Czochralski technique was printed in 1918 within the German chemistry journal Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie, however he by no means discovered an utility for it. (The strategy wasn’t used till 1948, when Bell Labs engineers Gordon Kidd Teal and J.B. Little tailored it to develop single germanium crystals for his or her semiconductor manufacturing, in line with Material World.)
Czochralski continued working in metallic science, founding and directing a analysis laboratory in 1917 at Metallgesellschaft in Frankfurt. In 1919 he was one of many founding members of the German Society for Metals Science, in Sankt Augustin. He served as its president till 1925.
Round that point he developed an innovation that led to his wealth and fame, Schmidt says. Referred to as “B-metal,” the metallic alloy was a cheaper different to the tin utilized in manufacturing railroad carriage bearings. Czochralski’s alloy was patented by the German railway Deutsche Bahn and performed a big function in advancing rail transport in Germany, Poland, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in line with Materials World.
“Launching this initiative has been fulfilling and personally rewarding work. My grandfather died in obscurity with out ever seeing the outcomes of his work, and my mom spent her whole grownup life making an attempt to proper these wrongs.”
The achievement introduced Czochralski many alternatives. In 1925 he grew to become president of the GDMB Society of Metallurgists and Miners, in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany. Henry Ford invited Czochralski to go to his factories and supplied him the place of director at Ford’s new aluminum manufacturing facility in Detroit. Czochralski declined the provide, longing to return to Poland, Schmidt says. As an alternative, Czochralski left Germany to change into a professor of metallurgy and metallic analysis on the Warsaw University of Technology, on the invitation of Polish President Ignacy Mościcki.
“Throughout World Struggle II, the Nazis took over his laboratories on the college,” Schmidt says. “He needed to cooperate with them or die. At night time, he and his workforce [at the university] labored with the Polish resistance and the Polish Military to struggle the Nazis.”
After the struggle ended, Czochralski was arrested in 1945 and charged with betraying Poland. Though he was capable of clear his identify, injury was carried out. He left Warsaw and returned to Kcynia, the place he ran a small pharmaceutical business till he died in 1953, in line with the JanCZ challenge.
Launching the JanCZ challenge
Schmidt was born in Czochralski’s residence in Kcynia in 1955, two years after his grandfather’s loss of life. He was named Klemens Jan Borys Czochralski. He and his mom (Czochralski’s youngest daughter) emigrated in 1958 when Schmidt was 3 years previous, shifting to Detroit as refugees. When he was 13, he grew to become a U.S. citizen. He modified his identify to Fred Schmidt after his mom married his stepfather.
Schmidt heard tales about his grandfather from his mom his complete life, however he says that “as a young person, I used to be simply concerned with hanging out with my associates, going to high school, and dealing. I actually didn’t need a lot to do with it [family history], as a result of it appeared exhausting to imagine.”
Portrait of Jan Czochralski Byla Sobie Fotka
In 2013 Polish scientist Pawel E. Tomaszewski contacted Schmidt to interview him for a Polish TV documentary about his grandfather.
“He had corresponded with my mom [who’d died 20 years earlier] for beforehand printed biographies about Czochralski,” Schmidt says. “I had some containers of her issues that I began going by to arrange for the interview, and I discovered authentic manuscripts and papers he [his grandfather] printed about his work.”
The TV crew traveled to america and interviewed him for the documentary, Schmidt says, including, “It was the primary time I’d ever needed to reckon with the Jan Czochralski story, my connection, my authentic identify, and my birthplace. It was each a really cathartic and traumatic expertise for me.”
Ten years after collaborating within the documentary, Schmidt says, he determined to reconnect together with his roots.
“It took me that lengthy to course of it [what he learned] and work out my function on this story,” he says. “That basically got here to life with my choice to reapply for Polish citizenship, reacquaint myself with the nation, and meet my household there.”
In 2024 he visited the Warsaw College of Expertise and noticed the IEEE Milestone plaque honoring his grandfather’s contribution to expertise.
“As soon as I realized what the Milestone award represented, I believed, Whoa, that’s large,” he says.
Sharing the story with the Western world
Since 2023, Schmidt has devoted himself to publicizing his grandfather’s story, primarily within the West as a result of he doesn’t communicate Polish. Sylwester Czochralski manages the work in Poland, with Schmidt’s enter.
Many of the out there writing about Czochralski is in Polish, Schmidt says, so his aim is to “unfold his story to English-speaking nations.”
He goals to do this, he says, by a biography written by Tomaszewski in Polish that might be translated to English, and a movie. The film is in improvement by Sywester Banaszkiewicz, who produced and directed the 2014 documentary in Poland. Schmidt says he hopes the film might be much like the 2023 biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who helped develop the world’s first nuclear weapons throughout World Struggle II.
The English and Polish variations of the web site take guests by Czochralski’s life and his work. They spotlight media protection of the chemist, together with newspaper articles, movies, and informational movies posted by YouTube creators.
Schmidt is working with the Czochralski Research and Development Institute in Toruń, Poland, to buy his grandfather’s residence in Kcynia and the mansion he lived in whereas he was a professor in Warsaw. The institute is a set of labs and initiatives devoted to honoring the chemist’s work.
“It’s going to be an extended, enjoyable journey, and we now have a whole lot of momentum,” Schmidt says of his plans to show the residences into museums.
“Launching this initiative has been fulfilling and personally rewarding work,” he says. “My grandfather died in obscurity with out ever seeing the outcomes of his work, and my mom spent her whole grownup life making an attempt to proper these wrongs.
“I’m on an accelerated course to make it [her goal] occur to the perfect of my means.”
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