Pierre Martin
Martin, Pierre
Born Aug. 18, 1824, in Bourges, department of Cher; died May 25 (?), 1915, in Fourchambaut, department of Nievre. French metallurgist.
Upon completing mining school, Martin worked at his father’s metallurgical plant in Fourchambaut, and from 1854 to 1883 he was director of a metallurgical plant in Sireuil, near Angouleme. In 1864, Martin proposed a new method for obtaining ingot steel in regenerative open-hearth furnaces. Using the principle of regenerating the heat of the products of combustion, which had been recently developed by the German engineer F. Siemens, Martin provided for preheating of not only the air but the gas as well. As a result, temperatures sufficient for steel smelting were obtained. The Siemens-Martin process came to be widely used in metallurgy in the last quarter of the 19th century.