Heyn, Emil

(b. Annaberg, Germany, 5 July 1867; d. Berlin, Germany, 1 March 1922)

technology, metalography.

Heyn, after graduating from the Realgymnasium in Annaberg, attended the Bergakademie at Freiberg, where Adolf Ledebur was his teacher. Several years of practical experience in the steel industry completed his education. He then taught at the Maschinenbauund Hüttenschule at Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia (now Gliwice, Poland), until 1898, when he was called to Charlottenburg as an assistant to Adolf Martens at the Königliche Mechanisch-Technische Versuchsanstalt, from which the Königliche Materialprüfungsamt at Berlin-Dahlem developed. Here Heyn took over the task of continuing the microscopic investigations of metals and alloys begun by Martens, applying them to practical problems.

Among his publications of this period is “Die Venwendbarkeit der Metallmikroskopie für die Prüfung der Werkzeugstähle” (1901) which clearly indicates the goal of all of Heyn’s later work: making scientific knowledge useful in practice. The same theme was treated in 1903 in Die Metallographie im Dienste der Hüttenkunde, which offered many new views on the practical application of metallography. With a lecture entitled “Labile und metastabile Gleichgewichte in Eisen-Kohlenstofflegierungen,” Heyn entered into the discussion of the nature of the annealing process. He proposed to distinquish a stable iron-carbon system and a metastabile iron-iron-car-bide system and to include both in a double diagram, the iron-carbon equilibrium diagram generally accepted today.

Following the expansion of the Mechanisch-Technische Versuchsanstalt into the Königliche Materialprüfungsamt in 1904, Heyn became deputy director and manager of the metallography division. In an exceedingly fruitful collaboration with Oswald Bauer this division produced, until the fall of 1914, a great number of papers on interesting defects, on the constitution of steels, and on problems of non-ferrous metals; these publications brought much prestige to the new institution. An article of 1911, “Über Spannungen in kaltgereckten Metallen,” was fundamental in furthering the knowledge of inner stresses.

In 1901 Heyn was called to the Berlin-Charlottenburg Technische Hochschule to succeed A. von Hörmann in the chair of general mechanical technology. Despite his heavy work load at the Materialprüfungsamt, Heyn sought to fulfill his duties as a university teacher with a great sense of responsibility. At his suggestion mechanical technology, which previously had covered all the materials used in machine construction, was divided into branches and metals were treated according to their relative importance. In 1911 Heyn published his pioneering article “Der technologische Unterricht als Vorstufe für die Ausbildung der Konstrukteure,” which played a major role in the organization of technological education in German colleges. In his last years Heyn worked exclusively with nonferrous metals, and with characteristic energy he founded the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Metallkunde that was to create a broader basis for the practical application of metallography.

In 1920 Heyn was appointed director of the newly founded Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Metallforschung. In December 1921 he was ceremoniously installed in this post, but a short time later he contracted grave illness, from which he never recovered.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Encompasing the metallography of iron and of the nonferrous metals, Heyn’s scientific work treats inner stresses and considers pedagogic problems. Among his many works are the following, published in the first decade of the twentieth century: “Die Theorie der Eisen-Kohlenstofflegierungen nach Osmond und Roberts-Austen,” in Stahl und Eisen, 20 (1900), 625–636; “Einfluess des Siliziums auf die Festigkeitseigenschaften des Flussstahles,” ibid., 21 (1901), 460–464; “Die Verwendbarkeit der Matallmikroskopie für die Prüfung der Werkzeugstähle,” ibid., 977–980; “The Overheating of Mild Steel,” in Journal of the Iron and Steel Institute, 2 (1902), 73–109, discussion on 110–145; Die Metallographie im Dienste der Hütenkunde (Freiberg, 1903); “Labile und metastabile Gleichgewichte in Eisen-Kohlenstofflegierungen,” in Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie, 10 (1904), 491–503; “Über Ätzverfahren zur makroskopischen Gefügeuntersuchung des schmiedbaren Eisens und über die damit zu erzielenden Ergebnisse,” in Metallurgie, 4 (1907), 119–122; “Über bleibende Spannungen in Werkstücken infolge Abkühlung,” in Stahl und Eisen, 27 (1907), 1309–1315, 1347–1358; “Zur Metallurgie des Roheisens,” ibid., 1565–1571, 1621–1625, written with O. Bauer; and “Über den Angriff des Eisens durch Wasser und Wässrige Lösungen,” in Mitteilungen aus dem K. Materialprüfungsmt zu Berlin-Dahelm, 26 (1908), 1–104, written with O. Bauer.

After 1910 he published “Der technologische Unterricht als Vorstufe für die Ausbildung der Konstrukteure,” in Zeitschrift des Vereins deutscher Ingenieure, 55 (1911), 201–210, 305–308; “über Spannungen in Kaltgereckten Metallen,” in Internationale Zeitschrift für Metallographie, 1 (1911), 16, written with O. Bauer; “Über Spannungen in Kesselbechen,” in Stahl und Eisen, 31 (1911), 760–765, written with O. Bauer; “Untersuchungen über Lagermetalle,” ibid., 509–511, 1416–1422, written with O. Bauer; “Die Kerbwirkung und ihre Bedeutung für den Konstrukteur,” in Zeitschrift des Vereins deutscher Ingenieure, 58 (1914), 338–391; Untersuchungen “über die Wärmleitfaähigkeit feuerfester Baustoffe,” in Stahl und Eisen, 34 (1914), 832–834; Untersuchungen über Lagermetalle, ausgeführt im Kgl. Materialprüfungsamt Berlin-Lichterfelde im Auftrage des Veriens zur Beförderung des Gewerbefleisses zu Berlin (Berlin, 1914), written with O. Bauer; “Einige weitere Mitteilungen über Eigenspannungen und damit zusammenhängende Fragen,” in Stahl und Eisen, 37 (1917), 442–448, 474–479, 497–500; “Neuere Forschungen über kerbwirkung, insbesondere auf optischem Wege,” ibid., 41 (1921), 541–546, 611–617, 700; and Metallographie, kurze gemeinfassliche Darstellung der Lehre von den Metallen und ihren Legierungen, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Metallmikroskopie, 3rd ed., revised by O. Bauer (Berlin–Leipzig, 1926).

II. Secondary Literature “E. Heyni,” in Zeit-schrift für Metalkunde, 14 (1922), 97–100; and O. Bauer, “Gedächtnisrede auf E. Heyn in der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Metallkunde, Berlin, 30 Juni 1933,” in Mitteilungen aus dem K. Materialprüfungsmat zu Berlin-Dahlem, 40 (1922), 1–10.

Franz Wever