thumb|upright|Bust of Heroult in Thury-Harcourt

Paul (Louis-Toussaint) Héroult (10 April 1863 – 9 May 1914) was a French scientist. He was one of the inventors of the Hall-Héroult process for smelting aluminium, and developed the first successful commercial electric arc furnace. He lived in Thury-Harcourt, Normandy.

Life and career

Paul Héroult read Henri Sainte-Claire Deville's treatise on aluminium, when he was 15 years old. At that time, aluminium was as expensive as silver and was used mostly for luxury items and jewellery. Héroult wanted to make it cheaper.

He succeeded in doing so when he discovered the electrolytic aluminium process in 1886.

The same year, in the United States, Charles Martin Hall (1863–1914) was discovering the same process. Because of this, the process was called the Hall–Heroult process.

Héroult's second most important contribution is the first commercially successful electric arc furnace (EAF) for steel in 1900. The Héroult furnace gradually replaced the giant smelters for the production of a variety of steels.

Héroult died on 9 May 1914; he was 51 years and 29 days old.

Footnotes and references

See also

  • Crucible Industries, Halcomb merged into Crucible in 1900
  • Methods of steel production:
  • Metallurgy cementation process
  • Crucible steel processes
  • Open-hearth furnace process, the Siemens-Martin process
  • Steel industry
  • Crucible steel
  • Blast furnace
  • Steel mill or Steelworks
  • History of aluminium

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| thumb|300px|1905 Heroult electric arc DC furnace

| thumb|300px|1905 Heroult electric arc DC furnace

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  • Images and history at pagesperso-orange.fr
  • Michel Caron, Paul Héroult (1863-1914): un grand inventeur original, La Vie des Sciences, Comptes Rendus, t.5, no. 1, pp. 39–57