DOE - Fossil Energy Techline - Issued on:  September 11, 2000

Albany Research Center Scientist Who Invented Titanium, Zirconium Processes Inducted into Inventors Hall of Fame

The Federal scientist whose invention made possible spacecraft and golf clubs - and a host of other products - took his place this past week with Walt Disney, Steve Wozniak and other inventors who have helped shape modern-day society.

	Dr. William Kroll (1889-1973) with an experimental unit for processing titanium into a useful product.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, OH, inducted Dr. William J. Kroll, a former employee of the Federal Government's Albany Research Center, into its ranks on September 9, 2000. Kroll is considered the "father of the titanium industry" for his breakthrough work in the 1930s to extract the metal from its natural state and transform it into a useful product.

Dr. Kroll died in 1973, but his process - later named the "Kroll Process" - made possible such modern-day products as jet engines, artificial hips and knees, golf clubs, watches, and marine equipment. The high strength and heat resistance of titanium also made it attractive for use in spacecraft as well as for pipes and valves in the chemical processing industry.

Although titanium was discovered in 1791 and is the fourth most abundant structural metal on Earth, it was virtually impossible to separate from its natural state until Dr. Kroll invented a way to combine titanium tetrachloride with calcium to produce ductile titanium.

When Dr. Kroll, a native of Luxemburg, fled Europe with the rise of Nazi Germany, he joined the Albany Research Center in Oregon, then part of the U.S. Bureau of Mines. While at the Center, Dr. Kroll successfully applied his titanium production process to zirconium. Today zirconium is a key ingredient in radar equipment, surgical instruments, fiber optics, and nuclear reactors. In 1951, the Albany Research Center began production of the zirconium used for the first U.S. nuclear submarine, the U.S.S. Nautilus. The Center became part of the U.S. Department of Energy in 1995.

Jean-Paul Lanner, president of Cerametal, one of the world's leading hard metal producers, accepted the Inventors Hall of Fame award for the Kroll family. Lanner and his father were long time friends of Dr. Kroll. Bill Riley, a current employee at the Albany Research Center, represented the laboratory at the event.

Also inducted in the ceremony were Walt Disney, the film and amusement park giant who also is credited with inventing the multiplane camera; Steve Wozniak, the Apple computer founder who ignited the personal computer revolution; Reginald Fessenden, a pioneer of AM radio; Alfred Free and Helen Murray Free who developed the Clinistix diabetes test; and J. Franklin Hyde whose work with fused silica led to the glass used in today's space shuttles and telescopes.

Dr. Kroll and his fellow inductees bring the number of inventors now in the Hall of Fame to 151. The National Inventors Hall of Fame was founded in 1973.

- End of TechLine -

For more information, contact:
Paula Palmer, DOE Albany Research Center, 541-967-5966, e-mail: palmer@alrc.doe.gov