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KARL FRIEDRICH PLATTNER (1800-x858)
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PLATTNER, KARL FRIEDRICH (1800-x858), German metallurgical chemist, was born at Kleinwaltersdorf, near Freiberg in Saxony, on the 2nd of January, 1800. ,His father, though only a poor working miner, found the means to have him educated first at the Bergschule and then at. the.Berg'-akademie of Freiberg, and after he had completed his courses there in 182o he obtained• employment, chiefly as assayer, in connexion with the royal mines and metal works. Having taken up the idea of quantitative mouth-blowpipe assaying, which was then almost unknown—except that E Harkort (1797-1835) in 1827, while a student in Freiberg Academy, had worked out a blowpipe assay for silver—he succeeded in devising trustworthy methods for all the ordinary useful metals; in particular his modes of assaying for nickel and cobalt quickly found favour with metallurgists. He also devoted himself to the improvement of qualitative blowpipe analysis; and summed up his experience in a treatise Die'Probierkunst mit dem Lothrohr (1835), which' became a standard authority. In 184o he was made chief of the royal department of assaying. Two years later he was deputed to complete, a course of lectures on metallurgy at the Bergakademie in place of W. A. Lampadius (1772.1842), whom he subsequently succeeded as professor. He died at Freiberg on the 22nd of January 1858. In addition to many memoirs on metallurgical subjects he also published Die metallurgischen Rostprocesse theoretisch betrachrtet 56), and posthumously Vorlesnngen uber allgemeine Euttenkunde .