Benedicks concentrated on the natural sciences at the University of Uppsala and received the Ph.D. in 1904 with the dissertation Recherches physiques et physicochimiques sur l'acier au carbone.
Career
Achievements
Membership
Awards
Carnegie Gold medal
Benedicks was awarded the Carnegie Gold medal for his work on the cooling power of liquids, quenching velocities, and the constituents of troostite and austenite.
Benedicks concentrated on the natural sciences at the University of Uppsala and received the Ph.D. in 1904 with the dissertation Recherches physiques et physicochimiques sur l'acier au carbone.
Benedicks was awarded the Carnegie Gold medal for his work on the cooling power of liquids, quenching velocities, and the constituents of troostite and austenite.
Carl Axel Fredrik Benedicks was a Swedish physicist whose work included geology, mineralogy, chemistry, physics, astronomy, and mathematics. He is regarded as the father of Swedish metallography because he pleaded for the establishment of a special research laboratory for metals and metallography.
Background
Carl Axel Fredrik Benedicks was born on May 27, 1875, in Stockholm, Sweden. Benedicks’ father, Edvard Otto Benedicks, and his mother, Sofia Elisabeth Tholander, came from families that had been involved in the Swedish steel industry for generations.
Education
Interested from boyhood in the theoretical study of minerals and metals, Benedicks concentrated on the natural sciences at the University of Uppsala and received the Ph.D. in 1904 with the dissertation Recherches physiques et physicochimiques sur l'acier au carbone.
In 1910 Benedicks was appointed professor of physics at the University of Stockholm. Sponsored by the iron and steel industry and the government, the Swedish Institute of Metallography in Stockholm became a reality in 1920, and Benedicks served as its director for fifteen years. He continued his scientific work for twenty years more at the Laboratorium Benedicks.
Benedicks personally performed many experiments, usually employing apparatus designed and constructed by himself or in collaboration with his assistants. One of the fields in which he pioneered was metal microscopy.
In the light of modern physics, some of Benedicks’ theories and interpretations of thermoelectrical phenomena and some of his solutions to problems concerning physical properties of steel seem to be outdated and are subject to criticism. Nevertheless, during his lifetime they aroused great interest in international circles.
Benedicks donated his private library of rare books on alchemy, natural science, metallurgy, and iron and steel manufacturing, totaling about 1,500 volumes, to the Institute of Metallography, now reorganized and named the Swedish Metal Research Institute.