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Carl Josef Bayer

Materials Engineering

Carl Josef Bayer was a chemist from Austria-Hungary who invented and named the Bayer process of extracting alumina from bauxite, essential to this day to the economical production of aluminium. Born in 1847, he studied chemistry under Robert Bunsen at Heidelberg University and took his doctorate in 1871. While working in Saint Petersburg to provide alumina to the textile industry, he discovered in 1887 that aluminium hydroxide precipitated from an alkaline solution is crystalline and easy to filter and wash, and in 1888 he patented his four stage process. Together with the Hall-Heroult process, his method caused the price of aluminium to drop by about 80 percent. He died in 1904.

Facts
Birth Year
1847 1
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In Field

Source Wikipedia: Carl Josef Bayer

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Source Wikipedia: Carl Josef Bayer
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1. Wikipedia: Carl Josef Bayer
  • Lead
    Carl Josef Bayer (also Karl Bayer, 4 March 1847-4 October 1904)
  • In Field: Materials Engineering, Introduction
    In the mid-19th-century, aluminium was so precious that a bar of the metal was exhibited alongside the French Crown Jewels at the Exposition Universelle in Paris 1855.
  • In Group: Metallurgists and Materials Inventors, Introduction
    Carl Josef Bayer (also Karl Bayer, 4 March 1847-4 October 1904) was a chemist from Austria-Hungary who invented and named the Bayer process of extracting alumina from bauxite, essential to this day to the economical production of aluminium.
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