Prof. Gertruda Uścińska, Acting Rector of the Nicolaus Copernicus School, recently met with Fred Schmidt, the grandson of Prof. Jan Czochralski, a distinguished Polish scientist whose groundbreaking work continues to impact the world. Without his discovery, modern electronics as we know them would not exist.
Prof. Jan Czochralski was a chemist, materials scientist, and inventor, and is globally recognized as one of the most renowned Polish scientists. Among his significant contributions are the radiomicroscope, a railway bearing alloy known as “B metal,” and the Czochralski method of crystal growth, which earned him the title “Father of Modern Electronics.”
Jan Czochralski’s scientific achievements include over a hundred publications, two monographs, numerous patents, and thousands of pages of classified reports. One of his primary interests was crystallography. Already in 1913, in his first publication, he presented “technological conclusions from the crystallography of metals.”
It was soon recognized that the method developed by Prof. Czochralski was suitable for growing single crystals, initially of metals and later of semiconductors. In April 1954, a team from Texas Instruments built the first transistor from a silicon crystal grown using the Czochralski method. Since then, the amount of silicon produced using this method has grown exponentially. This marked the beginning of the method’s tremendous success—without it, the affordable production of silicon, the fundamental component of modern electronics, from transistors to integrated circuits, would not be possible.
Jan Czochralski was not only a scientist but also an active patron of the arts. His home at 4 Nabielaka Street in Warsaw served as a small art gallery and a well-known cultural salon.
Professor Jan Czochralski was decades ahead of his time. Internationally, he is often mentioned alongside Nicolaus Copernicus and Marie Curie-Skłodowska. Silicon single crystals are the foundation of electronic devices. The method developed by the eminent Polish scientist Prof. Czochralski, known as the Father of Electronics, is used to produce 90% of silicon single crystals (and previously also germanium).
