Karl Friedrich Plattner (2 January 1800 – 22 January 1858) was a German

metallurgical Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe th ...

. He was born at Kleinwaltersdorf, near

Freiberg Freiberg is a university and former mining town in Saxony, Germany. It is a so-called ''Große Kreisstadt'' (large county town) and the administrative centre of Mittelsachsen district. Its historic town centre has been placed under heritage c ...

in the

Electorate of Saxony The Electorate of Saxony, also known as Electoral Saxony (German: or ), was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire from 1356–1806. It was centered around the cities of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz. In the Golden Bull of 1356, Emperor Charles ...

, on 2 January 1800. His father, though only a poor working miner, found the means to have him educated first at the ''Bergschule'' (mining school) and then at the ''Bergakademie'' of Freiberg. After he had completed his courses there in 1820 he obtained employment, chiefly as an assayer, in connexion with the royal mines and metal works. Having taken up the idea of quantitative mouth blowpipe assaying, which was then almost unknown, he succeeded in devising dependable methods for all the ordinary useful metals. In particular his modes of assaying for nickel and

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, pr ...

quickly found favour with metallurgists. He also devoted himself to the improvement of qualitative blowpipe analysis, and summed up his experience in a treatise ''Die Probierkunst mit dem Löthrohr'' (1835), which became a standard authority. In 1840 he was made chief of the royal department of assaying. Two years later he was deputed to complete a course of lectures on metallurgy at the Bergakademie in place of W. A. Lampadius (1772–1842), whom he subsequently succeeded as professor. He died at Freiberg on 22 January 1858. In addition to many memoirs on metallurgical subjects he also published ''Die metallurgischen Rostprocesse theoretisch betrachtet'', and posthumously ''Vorlesungen über allgemeine Hüttenkunde''.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Plattner, Karl Friedrich 1800 births 1858 deaths 19th-century German chemists German metallurgists People from the Electorate of Saxony Scientists from Freiberg Engineers from Saxony