Rediscovering the Legacy of Chemist Jan Czochralski

In times of political unrest, history is often rewritten, erased, or lost. That’s what happened to the legacy of Jan Czochralski, a Polish chemist whose contributions to semiconductor manufacturing were erased after World War II.

In 1916, he invented a method for growing single crystals of semiconductors, metals, and synthetic gemstones. The process, now known as the Czochralski method, allows scientists to better control the quality of a semiconductor.

After the war ended, Czochralski was falsely accused by the Polish government of collaborating with the Germans and betraying his country, according to an article published by the International Union of Crystallography. These allegations apparently ended his academic career as a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology and led to the erasure of his name and works from the school’s archives.

He died in 1953 in obscurity in his hometown of Kcynia.

The Czochralski method was recognized in 2019 with an IEEE milestone for enabling the development of semiconductor devices and modern electronics. Administered by the IEEE History Center and supported by donors, the Milestone program recognizes outstanding technical developments around the world.

Inspired by the IEEE recognition, Czochralski’s grandson Fred Schmidt and great-grandnephew Sylwester Czochralski started the JanCZ project. The initiative, which aims to inform the public about Czochralski’s life and scientific impact, operates two websites, one in English and the other in Polish.

“Discover the [IEEE Milestone] “The plaque changed my whole mission,” Schmidt says. “It inspired me to engage with Poland, my family history and my grandfather’s story. [on] a more personal level. THE [Milestone] is an important reward of validation and recognition. This is a big part of what I build my entire case and story around as I promote the legacy and story of Jan Czochralski to the Western world.

Schmidt, who lives in Texas, is seeking to produce a biopic, translate a Polish biography into English and turn the chemist’s former homes in Kcynia and Warsaw into museums. The Jan Czochralski Memorial Foundation was created by Schmidt to help fund the projects.

The life of the Polish chemist

Before Czochralski was born in 1885, Kcynia became part of the German Empire in 1871. Although his family identified as Polish and spoke the language at home, they could not publicly acknowledge his culture, Schmidt says.

When it came time for Czochralski to go to college, rather than attend one in Warsaw, he did what many Germans did at the time: he attended one in Berlin.

After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in metal chemistry in 1907 at the Königlich Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (today Technische Universität Berlin), he joined the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft in Berlin as an engineer.

Czochralski experimented with materials to find new formulations that could improve electrical cables and machines at the start of the electrical age, according to a Material world article.

While investigating metal crystallization rates, Czochralski accidentally dipped his pen into a pot of molten tin instead of an inkwell. A tin filament formed on the tip of the pen, which he found interesting. Through research, he proved that the filament was a single crystal. His discovery inspired him to experiment with mass production of semiconductor crystals.

His article on what he called the Czochralski method was published in 1918 in the German Journal of Chemistry. Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemiebut he never found an application for it. (The method was not used until 1948, when Bell Labs engineers Gordon Kidd Teal and JB Little adapted it to grow single germanium crystals for their semiconductor production, according to Material world.)

Czochralski continued to work in metals science, founding and directing a research laboratory in 1917 at the Metallgesellschaft in Frankfurt. In 1919 he was one of the founding members of the German Society for Metal Science in Sankt Augustin. He was its president until 1925.

Around that time, he developed an innovation that led to his wealth and fame, Schmidt says. Called “metal B”, this metal alloy was a cheaper alternative to the tin used in the manufacture of railway car bearings. Czochralski’s alloy was patented by the German railway company Deutsche Bahn and played an important role in the advancement of rail transportation in Germany, Poland, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to Material world.

“Starting this initiative has been rewarding and personally rewarding work. My grandfather died in obscurity without ever seeing the results of his work, and my mother spent her entire adult life trying to right those wrongs.”

This feat gave Czochralski many opportunities. In 1925 he became president of the GDMB Society of Metallurgists and Miners in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany. Henry Ford invited Czochralski to tour his factories and offered him the position of manager of Ford’s new aluminum plant in Detroit. Czochralski declined the offer, wanting to return to Poland, Schmidt says. Instead, Czochralski left Germany to become a professor of metallurgy and metals research at the Warsaw University of Technology, at the invitation of Polish President Ignacy Mościcki.

“During World War II, the Nazis took over his laboratories at the university,” Schmidt says. “He had to cooperate with them or die. At night, he and his team [at the university] worked with the Polish resistance and the Polish army to fight the Nazis.

After the end of the war, Czochralski was arrested in 1945 and charged with treason of Poland. Even if he was able to clear his name, the damage was done. He left Warsaw and returned to Kcynia, where he ran a small pharmaceutical company until his death in 1953, according to the JanCZ project.

Launch of the JanCZ project

Schmidt was born in Czochralski’s house in Kcynia in 1955, two years after his grandfather’s death. His name was Klemens Jan Borys Czochralski. He and his mother (Czochralski’s youngest daughter) emigrated in 1958 when Schmidt was 3, settling in Detroit as refugees. At the age of 13, he became an American citizen. He changed his name to Fred Schmidt after his mother married his stepfather.

Schmidt heard stories about his grandfather from his mother his whole life, but he says that “when I was a teenager, I just wanted to hang out with my friends, go to school and work. I really didn’t want much to do with that.” [family history]because it seemed hard to believe.

Portrait of Jan Czochralski Byla Sobie Fotka

In 2013, Polish scientist Pawel E. Tomaszewski contacted Schmidt to interview him for a Polish television documentary about his grandfather.

“He had corresponded with my mother [who’d died 20 years earlier] for previously published biographies on Czochralski,” Schmidt says. “I had a few boxes of his stuff that I started going through to prepare for the interview, and I found some original manuscripts and documents that he had written. [his grandfather] published on his work.

The television crew traveled to the United States and interviewed him for the documentary, Schmidt says, adding: “It was the first time I had to consider Jan Czochralski’s story, my connections, my original name and my place of birth. It was both a very cathartic and traumatic experience for me.”

Ten years after participating in the documentary, Schmidt says he decided to reconnect with his roots.

“It took me this long to process it [what he learned] and understand my role in this story,” he says. “This really came to fruition with my decision to apply for Polish citizenship again, to reacquaint myself with the country and meet my family there.”

In 2024, he visited the Warsaw University of Technology and saw the IEEE Milestone plaque honoring his grandfather’s contribution to technology.

“Once I learned what the Milestone Prize was, I was like, ‘Whoa, this is huge,’” he says.

Sharing history with the Western world

Since 2023, Schmidt has dedicated himself to spreading the story of his grandfather, mainly in the West because he does not speak Polish. Sylwester Czochralski is managing the work in Poland, with contributions from Schmidt.

Most of the available writings about Czochralski are in Polish, Schmidt says, so his goal is to “spread his story in English-speaking countries.”

He aims to achieve this, he says, through a biography written by Tomaszewski in Polish that will be translated into English, and a film. The film is being developed by Sywester Banaszkiewicz, who produced and directed the 2014 documentary in Poland. Schmidt says he hopes the film will be similar to the 2023 biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who helped develop the world’s first nuclear weapons during World War II.

The English and Polish versions of the website take visitors through Czochralski’s life and work. They highlight media coverage of the chemist, including newspaper articles, films, and news videos posted by YouTube creators.

Schmidt is working with the Czochralski Research and Development Institute in Toruń, Poland, to purchase his grandfather’s house in Kcynia and the mansion he lived in while he was a professor in Warsaw. The institute is a collection of laboratories and initiatives dedicated to honoring the work of the chemist.

“This is going to be a long, fun journey, and we have a lot of momentum,” Schmidt says of his plan to turn the residences into museums.

“Launching this initiative has been rewarding and personally rewarding work,” he says. “My grandfather died in obscurity without ever seeing the results of his work, and my mother spent her entire adult life trying to right those wrongs.

“I’m on a crash course to get there [her goal] achieve to the best of my abilities.