Jan Czochralski. The man who changed the world

T H E M A N W H O C H A N G E D T H E WO R L D

Jan Czochralski’s life reads like the screenplay of a Hollywood blockbuster. The adventures of a self-taught man – not unlike the inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Alva Edison – who struggled to graduate from school because he asked his teachers too many awkward questions. At the same time, he, like Edison, was one of those geniuses whose legacy touches billions of people around the globe on a daily basis.

We have the classic story of the small-town boy (born in Kcynia) from a poor family, whose stubbornness, talent and hard work earn him worldwide fame and fortune.

In the end he turns down the offer of an even greater career and even higher earnings from Henry Ford (the founder of the famous car company). This was purely so he could return to Poland as it was rising from the ruins (after the country’s partition and the devastation of World War I) and build the foundations of science and industry.

And as in the classic thriller there is also a battle between spy agencies, and a double life. During the Nazi occupation, Czochralski officially collaborated with the Germans, while he was in fact working for the Home Army and the Polish Underground State.

All that is missing is the happy ending. The career and life of one of the most eminent and at the same time least known Poles born in our region, was abruptly interrupted by communist harassment.

This modest publication is an attempt to give this exciting story a new ending. We owe Jan Czochralski that much at least.

Piotr Całbecki Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship

text

Maciej Jasiński illustrations

ISBN 978-83-949231-5-0

Jacek Michalski

text Maciej Jasiński illustrations Jacek Michalski T H E M A N W H O C H A N G E D T H E WO R L D

content advisor Jarosław Chrostowski

fot. Wikipedia

translation We live in an amazing world. We live in a world where borders are becoming less important. A world in which people of different nations, cultures and languages can easily communicate with each other using mobile phones, e-mail or websites. We can have friends in every corner of the globe, and live on one continent while working on another. For the first time in history, the world is truly becoming a common space, a genuine homeland for all.

All these extraordinary and profound social transformations started so recently that they are just gaining momentum as new tools for communication and data processing spread. None of this would be possible without electronics. And modern electronics would not exist were it not for integrated circuits made of monocrystalline semiconductors such as silicon or (to a lesser degree) gallium arsenide.

What flint was to the Stone Age and iron to the Iron Age, so monocrystals produced using the method developed by Jan Czochralski are to the modern era. It is a great irony of history that the significance of the invention was never known to its author. Even as he was dying, Jan Czochralski did not know the extent to which his method of growing crystals would become important to how our civilisation developed. Electronics was still in its infancy. The first computers, such as the American ENIAC or the British Colossus machines (built to break ciphers using methods created by, among others, Bydgoszcz-born Marian Rejewski), were huge, filling entire rooms with arrays of fragile electron tubes that consumed vast amounts of electricity. The spread of fast, light and reliable consumer electronics made of semiconducting crystals was well over a decade away.

Jan Czochralski’s monocrystals turned out to be mightier than the most powerful crystals seen in superhero comics or science-fiction movies. His, however, are no figment of the imagination, no fantasy; they exist for real, and their power has transformed our entire planet. And while crystals usually bring destruction in superhero stories, Jan Czochralski’s have made the world a better place. By starting a car with its electronic control systems, switching on a computer, using Facebook on a smartphone, or reaching for a drug that could not have been developed without electronic scientific instruments, we truly owe it to remember this decades-forgotten man who more than anyone has united people all over the planet.

Jan Czochralski was born on October 23, 1885 in Kcynia, to a large family of carpenters. In 1904 he leaves to Berlin, where he soon ends up at AEG laboratories. In 1910 he graduates in chemical engineering. Six years later, he invents a method for measuring the rate of metal crystallisation that is today used in growing monocrystals. In 1924, he develops a tin-free bearing alloy that revolutionises the rail industry. A year later he is appointed president of the General Board of the German Society of Metal Science. In 1928, at the request of the President of Poland, Ignacy Mościcki, he returns to Poland. There, in 1930 he is made a full professor. He works at the Warsaw University of Technology, where he sets up the Department of Metallurgy and Metal Sciences. During the war, thanks to his connections, the facility he runs helps many Polish associates to survive. He becomes involved in saving scientists and artists from repression by the occupying forces. Due to the work that was done for the Wehrmacht at his facility, after the war Czochralski is accused of collaboration with the invader and arrested.

The investigation is closed, but still, in December 1945 the University of Technology’s authorities strip him of his professorship. He returns to Kcynia, where he establishes BION, a small domestic chemicals company. After a brutal search of his house by the Office of Public Security he suffers a heart attack, and on April 22, 1953 dies in hospital in Poznań. In 2011, after reviewing documents proving that Czochralski had worked with the intelligence services of the Supreme Command of the Home Army, the senate of the Warsaw University of Technology completely exonerates and rehabilitates him. As a result, the sejm of the Republic of Poland declares 2013 the Year of Jan Czochralski.

Jarosław Chrostowski (physicist, journalist and scientific editor, populariser of natural and technical sciences)

Tim Brombley, Damian Jasiński ISBN 978-83-949231-5-0 publication date 2020 print run 500 copies publisher Agencja Reklamowa GALL sc ul. Szosa Chełmińska 50, 87-100 Toruń gall@gall.torun.pl commissioned by Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region

Contact: Office of the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region in Toruń Address: Plac Teatralny 2, 87-100 Toruń, tel. +48 56: 6218600, 6218610 e-mail: punkt.informacyjny@kujawsko-pomorskie.pl www.kujawsko-pomorskie.pl facebook.com/WojewodztwoKujawskoPomorskie twitter.com/lubietubyc instagram.com/kujawskopomorskie youtube.com/user/umwkp issuu.com/kujawsko-pomorskie flickr.com/photos/kujawskopomorskie

text Maciej Jasiński illustrations Jacek Michalski T H E M A N W H O C H A N G E D T H E WO R L D

content advisor Jarosław Chrostowski

fot. Wikipedia

translation We live in an amazing world. We live in a world where borders are becoming less important. A world in which people of different nations, cultures and languages can easily communicate with each other using mobile phones, e-mail or websites. We can have friends in every corner of the globe, and live on one continent while working on another. For the first time in history, the world is truly becoming a common space, a genuine homeland for all.

All these extraordinary and profound social transformations started so recently that they are just gaining momentum as new tools for communication and data processing spread. None of this would be possible without electronics. And modern electronics would not exist were it not for integrated circuits made of monocrystalline semiconductors such as silicon or (to a lesser degree) gallium arsenide.

What flint was to the Stone Age and iron to the Iron Age, so monocrystals produced using the method developed by Jan Czochralski are to the modern era. It is a great irony of history that the significance of the invention was never known to its author. Even as he was dying, Jan Czochralski did not know the extent to which his method of growing crystals would become important to how our civilisation developed. Electronics was still in its infancy. The first computers, such as the American ENIAC or the British Colossus machines (built to break ciphers using methods created by, among others, Bydgoszcz-born Marian Rejewski), were huge, filling entire rooms with arrays of fragile electron tubes that consumed vast amounts of electricity. The spread of fast, light and reliable consumer electronics made of semiconducting crystals was well over a decade away.

Jan Czochralski’s monocrystals turned out to be mightier than the most powerful crystals seen in superhero comics or science-fiction movies. His, however, are no figment of the imagination, no fantasy; they exist for real, and their power has transformed our entire planet. And while crystals usually bring destruction in superhero stories, Jan Czochralski’s have made the world a better place. By starting a car with its electronic control systems, switching on a computer, using Facebook on a smartphone, or reaching for a drug that could not have been developed without electronic scientific instruments, we truly owe it to remember this decades-forgotten man who more than anyone has united people all over the planet.

Jan Czochralski was born on October 23, 1885 in Kcynia, to a large family of carpenters. In 1904 he leaves to Berlin, where he soon ends up at AEG laboratories. In 1910 he graduates in chemical engineering. Six years later, he invents a method for measuring the rate of metal crystallisation that is today used in growing monocrystals. In 1924, he develops a tin-free bearing alloy that revolutionises the rail industry. A year later he is appointed president of the General Board of the German Society of Metal Science. In 1928, at the request of the President of Poland, Ignacy Mościcki, he returns to Poland. There, in 1930 he is made a full professor. He works at the Warsaw University of Technology, where he sets up the Department of Metallurgy and Metal Sciences. During the war, thanks to his connections, the facility he runs helps many Polish associates to survive. He becomes involved in saving scientists and artists from repression by the occupying forces. Due to the work that was done for the Wehrmacht at his facility, after the war Czochralski is accused of collaboration with the invader and arrested.

The investigation is closed, but still, in December 1945 the University of Technology’s authorities strip him of his professorship. He returns to Kcynia, where he establishes BION, a small domestic chemicals company. After a brutal search of his house by the Office of Public Security he suffers a heart attack, and on April 22, 1953 dies in hospital in Poznań. In 2011, after reviewing documents proving that Czochralski had worked with the intelligence services of the Supreme Command of the Home Army, the senate of the Warsaw University of Technology completely exonerates and rehabilitates him. As a result, the sejm of the Republic of Poland declares 2013 the Year of Jan Czochralski.

Jarosław Chrostowski (physicist, journalist and scientific editor, populariser of natural and technical sciences)

Tim Brombley, Damian Jasiński ISBN 978-83-949231-5-0 publication date 2020 print run 500 copies publisher Agencja Reklamowa GALL sc ul. Szosa Chełmińska 50, 87-100 Toruń gall@gall.torun.pl commissioned by Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region

Contact: Office of the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region in Toruń Address: Plac Teatralny 2, 87-100 Toruń, tel. +48 56: 6218600, 6218610 e-mail: punkt.informacyjny@kujawsko-pomorskie.pl www.kujawsko-pomorskie.pl facebook.com/WojewodztwoKujawskoPomorskie twitter.com/lubietubyc instagram.com/kujawskopomorskie youtube.com/user/umwkp issuu.com/kujawsko-pomorskie flickr.com/photos/kujawskopomorskie

T H E M A N W H O C H A N G E D T H E WO R L D

Jan Czochralski’s life reads like the screenplay of a Hollywood blockbuster. The adventures of a self-taught man – not unlike the inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Alva Edison – who struggled to graduate from school because he asked his teachers too many awkward questions. At the same time, he, like Edison, was one of those geniuses whose legacy touches billions of people around the globe on a daily basis.

We have the classic story of the small-town boy (born in Kcynia) from a poor family, whose stubbornness, talent and hard work earn him worldwide fame and fortune.

In the end he turns down the offer of an even greater career and even higher earnings from Henry Ford (the founder of the famous car company). This was purely so he could return to Poland as it was rising from the ruins (after the country’s partition and the devastation of World War I) and build the foundations of science and industry.

And as in the classic thriller there is also a battle between spy agencies, and a double life. During the Nazi occupation, Czochralski officially collaborated with the Germans, while he was in fact working for the Home Army and the Polish Underground State.

All that is missing is the happy ending. The career and life of one of the most eminent and at the same time least known Poles born in our region, was abruptly interrupted by communist harassment.

This modest publication is an attempt to give this exciting story a new ending. We owe Jan Czochralski that much at least.

Piotr Całbecki Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship

text

Maciej Jasiński illustrations

ISBN 978-83-949231-5-0

Jacek Michalski