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Karl Friedrich Plattner

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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KARL FRIEDRICH PLATTNER (1800-1858), German metallurgical chemist, was born at Kleinwaltersdorf, near Freiberg in Saxony, on the 2nd of January, 1800. His father, though only a poor working miner, found the means to have him educated first at the Bergschule and then at the Bergakademie of Freiberg, and after he had completed his courses there in 1820 he obtained employment, chiefly as 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 - except that E. Harkort (1797-1835) in 1827, while a student in Freiberg Academy, had worked out a blowpipe assay for silver - he succeeded in devising trustworthy methods for all the ordinary useful metals; in particular his modes of assaying for nickel and cobalt 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 Lothrohr (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 the 22nd of January 1858.

In addition to many memoirs on metallurgical subjects he also published Die metallurgischen Rostprocesse theoretisch betrachtet (1856), and posthumously Vorlesungen fiber allgemeine Hiittenkunde (1860).