Background
Adolf Martens was born on March 6, 1850 in Backendorf, a small village near to Hagenow (now a part of Gammelin) in Mecklenburg-Schwerin where his father Friedrich Martens was an estate tenant.
Str. des 17. Juni 115, 10623 Berlin, Germany
After attending the Realschule in Schwerin and gaining two years of practical experience, Adolf Martens studied mechanical engineering from 1868 to 1871 at the Königliche Gewerbeakademie in Berlin (later the Technische Hochschule of Berlin-Charlottenburg).
Str. des 17. Juni 115, 10623 Berlin, Germany
After attending the Realschule in Schwerin and gaining two years of practical experience, Adolf Martens studied mechanical engineering from 1868 to 1871 at the Königliche Gewerbeakademie in Berlin (later the Technische Hochschule of Berlin-Charlottenburg).
engineer inventor university professor
Adolf Martens was born on March 6, 1850 in Backendorf, a small village near to Hagenow (now a part of Gammelin) in Mecklenburg-Schwerin where his father Friedrich Martens was an estate tenant.
After attending the Realschule in Schwerin and gaining two years of practical experience, Adolf Martens studied mechanical engineering from 1868 to 1871 at the Königliche Gewerbeakademie in Berlin (later the Technische Hochschule of Berlin-Charlottenburg).
At the end of his training in 1871, Martens entered the service of the Prussian State Railway, where he participated in the planning of the great bridges over the Vistula near Thorn and over the Memel near Tilsit. From 1875 to 1879 he was a member of the Commission for the Berlin-Nordhausen-Wetzlar Railway. In this position, he had to supervise the preliminary work done by the companies supplying the iron superstructure of the bridges. He thus became involved, early in his career, with the techniques just then being developed for testing construction materials.
Martens, in this early period, was stimulated by a short book by Eduard Schott, Die Kunstgiesserei in Eisen, to begin metallographic studies for which he built his own microscope. His first publication, “Über die mikroskopische Untersuchung des Eisens” in 1878, contained his observations on freshly fractured iron surfaces, as well as drawings of etched and polished surfaces.
Further works followed and brought Martens into close contact with contemporary metallographers, sometimes provoking lively debates.
In 1884, after a short time as an assistant at the newly founded Königliche Technische Hochschule of Berlin-Charlottenburg, he was appointed a director of the associated Mechanisch-Technische Versuchsanstalt, which in 1903 became the Königliche Material-prufungsamt of Berlin-Dahlem. The brilliant design and organization of this institute were essentially his work.
Metallography did not at first come within the range of the Mechanisch-Technische Versuchsanstalt, and Martens could continue his very successful metallographic studies only in his free time. He could not resume them on a larger scale until 1898 when the Mechanisch-Technische Versuchsanstalt established a metallographic laboratory. His co-worker Emil Heyn greatly developed the field and made the institute a first-rate metallographic laboratory.
Martens’ works from this later period were concerned with all aspects of the testing of materials, and especially the development of new measuring methods and equipment. His Handbuch der Materialienkunde published in 1899 is a comprehensive work which earned him the high regard of his colleagues as well as many honors.
Quotations: "A careful observer of all these results cannot but come to the conclusion that in pig iron the various combinations of iron are only mechanically mixed; during the process of cooling or crystallization they arrange themselves with most surprising regularity. So the microscopical investigation of iron has a very great chance of becoming one of the most useful methods of practical analysis."
Martens was chosen vice-chairman of the International Society for Testing Materials (ISTM) at its founding in 1895; in 1897 he became chairman of the German Society.
Martens combined tireless research activity and unusual talents as a designer and organizer.
There is no information on whether Adolf Martens was ever married or had any children.