George Washington Goetz was born on February 17, 1856, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
His father, August William Goetz, was from Worms, on the Rhine, and his mother, Augusta (Stoltze) Goetz, a native of Erfurt, in Thuringia.
Goetz's attendance at the school met with more or less interruption, owing to the financial circumstances of his family. At ten his interest in the natural sciences was keenly awakened by the lectures, illustrated by experiments, at the Engleman private school.
His mother, noticing his own faculty for experimentation, thereupon placed entirely at his disposition a small room which served as his chemical and physical laboratory. After three years at the Engleman School, he was obliged, on account of the expense, to return to the public school.
One year at high school and a brief term at the University of Wisconsin ended his preliminary education.
In 1870, Goetz went to work as a telegraph operator in the office of the Milwaukee Iron Company. In Nelson P. Hulst, at that time chemist of the company, he found a most appreciative friend, in whose chemical laboratory he spent much time absorbing with avidity both chemical and technical information.
At the same time, he was reading Draper, Ganot, and Tyndall; taking mathematical lessons at night in exchange for lessons in telegraphy, and centering his interest in the metallurgical operations of the plant.
When, in 1876, Dr. Hermann Wedding visited the ironworks, he met young Goetz and immediately took an interest in him. After inquiring about the school of mines at Berlin, Goetz arranged to go there for study and left for Berlin in the fall of 1876.
The following summer, Wedding invited him to his home in the Harz Mountains where he was privileged, under the doctor’s guidance, to visit the metallurgical establishments in that vicinity.
Goetz commenced his metallurgical career with the Otis Steel Company in 1881 and was given charge of their open-hearth steel department. In 1882, he was again in Europe, studying mechanical-puddling, and upon returning had charge of that work, then new, at the Otis plant.
When in England he met Thomas, the inventor of the basic steel process, with whom he spent two months at Horde, Westphalia. He was consulting metallurgist for the Illinois Steel Company, the Wellman Iron & Steel Company, the Westinghouse Company, the Krupp Company of Germany, and others.
In 1885, 1888, 1890 and 1894, he was in Europe, investigating iron and steel problems and gas fuel. Toward the close of his life he took up in some degree, non-ferrous metallurgy, working in the Rocky Mountain states and Lake Superior regions, but he obtained no substantial results.
Goetz established at Milwaukee a complete metallurgical laboratory and was consulting metallurgist for many steel companies in the USA and in Europe. He won the foremost rank as an iron and steel metallurgist, through his pioneer work in several important improvements in his particular branch, such as the application of gas analysis, mechanical-puddling, and the basic process, which he was the first to use successfully in America, he established at Milwaukee a complete metallurgical laboratory.
In 1886, at Berlin, Germany, Goetz married Elsie Luedecke, whose acquaintance he had made at the home of his friend Hermann Wedding. Her devoted care and inspiration did much to prolong his life but could not avert the untimely end. She and their three children survived him.
