Wissenschaftler in Bewegung: Der Materialforscher Jan Czochralski zwischen den Weltkriegen

Abstract

Researcher in Motion: The Materials Scientist Jan Czochralski between the Wars

The text focuses on the materials scientist Jan Czochralski (1885–1953). While working in the metal-laboratories of AEG in Berlin and the Metallgesellschaft in Frankfurt/Main during the years 1908–1928, Czochralski was the author of some major inventions before he transferred his expertise to Warsaw where he held several positions in research institutions and became a professor at the Technical University. Based on his biography, the text looks at the connections between transnational communications in scientific knowledge and technological innovation together with the potential for conflict to which such transfers gave rise. Such conflict arose mainly from the fact that, during the first half of the twentieth century, politics (including public expectations of experts) were organised on a national basis; while, on the other hand, their expert knowledge and capacity for innovation quite frequently emerged from transnational communication and migration across geographical boundaries. By 1939, Czochralski finally became trapped in the German-Polish antagonisms, and, as a consequence, his personal reputation fell into oblivion after World War II (though not, however, the so-called Czochralski process).