Pierre-Émile Martin

Pierre-Émile Martin (1824 to 1915) was a French industrial engineer born in Bourges who is remembered for the Siemens-Martin process of steelmaking. He applied the principle of recovering hot gas in an open hearth furnace, a regenerative principle invented by Carl Wilhelm Siemens. In 1865, building on the Siemens process, he put into practice the method that bears his name, producing steel in a hearth by remelting scrap steel with an addition of cast iron to dilute impurities. For this work he received the Bessemer Gold Medal of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1915 and was made a knight of the French Legion of Honour in 1878 and an officer in 1910. He died at Fourchambault in 1915.