Friday, April 06, 2012

Chemistry Quiz


I invented the chemical process by which a formerly expensive metal became commonplace. They erected this statue in my honor, cast in the metal I helped popularize. Who am I, and where is this statue?

4 comments:

brian t said...

From the metal description, it sounds like Charles Martin Hall, joint inventor of the Hall-Heroult electrolytic process for refining Aluminium. If so, the statue is at Oberlin College in Ohio.

Anonymous said...

Charles Martin Hall, at Oberlin?

Jeffrey Shallit said...

Exactly right, except we Yanks call it "aluminum".

John Hooper said...

And there was me thinking you were a paragon of common sense in the Anglo Saxon mould and a part of our great Commonwealth of liberal, rationalist, pro-science and evolution sensibilists.

And then you go and shatter my il(de?)lusions and confess to being of the "aluminum" fraternity of improper English speakers.

Sad really.

Still, a great blog nonetheless.