Paul (Louis-Toussaint) Héroult (10 April 1863 – 9 May 1914) was a French scientist. He was the inventor of the

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

electrolysis In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a technique that uses direct electric current (DC) to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction. Electrolysis is commercially important as a stage in the separation of elements from n ...

and developed the first successful commercial

electric arc furnace An electric arc furnace (EAF) is a furnace that heats material by means of an electric arc. Industrial arc furnaces range in size from small units of approximately one-tonne capacity (used in foundries for producing cast iron products) up to ab ...

. He lived in

Thury-Harcourt Thury-Harcourt () is a former commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in northwestern France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Thury-Harcourt-le-Hom. The town is south of Caen, in the Orne valley. It i ...

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

Life and career

Paul Héroult read

Henri Sainte-Claire Deville Henri is an Estonian, Finnish, French, German and Luxembourgish form of the masculine given name Henry. People with this given name ; French noblemen :'' See the ' List of rulers named Henry' for Kings of France named Henri.'' * Henri I de Mon ...

's treatise on

, when he was 15 years old. At that time, aluminium was as expensive as

silver Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...

and was used mostly for luxury items and jewellery. Héroult wanted to make it cheaper. He succeeded in doing so when he discovered the electrolytic aluminium process in 1886. The same year, in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Charles Martin Hall Charles Martin Hall (December 6, 1863 – December 27, 1914) was an American inventor, businessman, and chemist. He is best known for his invention in 1886 of an inexpensive method for producing aluminum, which became the first metal to atta ...

(1863–1914) was discovering the same process. Because of this, the process was called the Hall–Heroult process. Héroult's second most important contribution is the first commercially successful

(EAF) for steel in 1900. The Héroult furnace gradually replaced the giant smelters for the production of a variety of steels. In 1905, Paul Héroult was invited to the United States as a technical adviser to several companies, and in particular to the

United States Steel Corporation United States Steel Corporation, more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an American integrated steel producer headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with production operations primarily in the United States of America and in several countries ...

and the Halcomb Steel Company. Halcomb installed the first Héroult furnace in the US. The invention of the electric arc furnace probably began when

Humphry Davy Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for t ...

discovered the carbon arc in 1800. Then in 1878

Carl Wilhelm Siemens Sir Carl Wilhelm Siemens (4 April 1823 – 19 November 1883), anglicised to Charles William Siemens, was a German-British electrical engineer and businessman. Biography Siemens was born in the village of Lenthe, today part of Gehrden, near Han ...

patented, constructed and operated both direct and indirect EAFs. Commercial use still needed to wait for larger supplies of electricity and better carbon electrodes. Paul Héroult is renowned for other major inventions, among them a self-supporting conduit still used to bring water down from mountain heights and across rivers to hydraulic power plants, avoiding the need to build expensive bridges. Christian Bickert said of him Christian Bickert, US Representative for

Pechiney Pechiney SA was a major aluminium conglomerate based in France. The company was acquired in 2003 by the Alcan Corporation, headquartered in Canada. In 2007, Alcan itself was taken over by mining giant Rio Tinto Alcan. Prior to its acquisition, ...

, New Orleans, 1986 Héroult's death on 9 May 1914 followed his reaching the age of 51 by twenty-nine days.

Footnotes and references

External links

Images and history at pagesperso-orange.fr
*Michel Caron
Paul Héroult (1863-1914): un grand inventeur original
La Vie des Sciences, Comptes Rendus, t.5, no. 1, pp.39-57 {{DEFAULTSORT:Heroult, Paul 1863 births 1914 deaths People from Thury-Harcourt 19th-century French inventors

Life and career

Footnotes and references

See also

External links