Rudolf Hoffmann
Rudolf Hoffmann (1873-1932)
1932 Obituary [1]
PROFESSOR DrPL.-ING. DR. RUDOLF HOFFMANN died suddenly on September 7, 1932, on his return from a long excursion with a party of his students.
He was born in Ingurtosi, Sardinia, on July 23, 1873, and studied at the Bergakademie at Freiberg i. Sa., w here he took his metallurgical degree in 1898. In 1903 he was appointed Deputy Director of the chief works of the Staatlich Sachsischen Hiltten- and Blaufarbenwerken.
He obtained his Assessor's examination by means of his theses "Advances of the Last Twenty Years in the Extraction of Zinc by Dry and Wet Methods and their Application to Conditions in Freiberg " (Jahrbuch far Berg- and thittenwesen in Kgr. Sachsen, 1904, pp. 19, 107) and " The Care of the Worker in the Government Foundry." On November 1, 1906, he was appointed Professor of Metallurgy and Electrometallurgy at the Staatlichen Bergakademie, Clausthal-i. Harz, and held this post for more than twenty-five years.
Professor Hoffmann visited many districts in Germany in order to study foundry conditions, and came to England in 1909, when he took part in the International Congress of Applied Chemistry in London, and in 1911 made a journey to Austria, the United States of America, Mexico, and Canada.
He took part in the Great War, and won the Iron Cross, Second and First Class. He was the author of many scientific papers, dealing chiefly with rolling processes of which he was the inventor and density determinations of metals in the solid and liquid states, his most notable publications being the section on the metallurgy of the metals arsenic, lead, cadmium, copper, nickel, cobalt, silver, zinc, and zinc white in Ullmann's " Encyclopadie der technischen Chemie," and the section on "General Metallurgy" in Kogler's "Taschenbuch fur Berg- and Hfittenleute." Professor Hoffmann was a member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the Electrochemical Society, Gesellschaft deutschen Metallhiitten- and Bergleute, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fiir Metallkunde, the Verein deutscher Eisenhiittenleute, the Verein deutscher Chemiker, the Verein deutscher Giessereifachleute, and the Bunsen Gesellschaft.
He was elected a Member of the Institute of Metals on March 8, 1926.