Erhard Hornbogen, a Fellow of ASM International, was born in Greiz, Germany, and died on April 16 at age 90. He studied metal physics at the University of Clausthal, where he worked on his Ph.D. thesis. He was the first to discover the shape-memory effect in copper-base alloys in 1956.
Later he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart, where he tackled the effect of lattice defects on nucleation events in solids. He developed new TEM methods to study particle-strengthened alloys. This led to the understanding and design of superalloys that are the basis for modern aircraft engines.
He was a professor for metal physics at the University of Goettingen from 1965 to 1967. Prof. Hornbogen founded the Institute for Materials at Ruhr-University Bochum, where he was chair of the Materials Science Department from 1968 to 1995. Among many other accomplishments, his studies provided the basis for understanding the structures and properties of grain boundaries in metals.
Prof. Hornbogen was an elected member of the North Rhine-Westphalia Academy of Sciences and of the German Academy of Technical Sciences. He was also the recipient of the TMS Mehl Award, honorary membership of the Japanese Institute for Materials, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Miskolc.
Learn more here: http://www.fems.org/news/obituary-erhard-hornbogen
