Stephen Brunauer

Stephen Brunauer ( born February 12, 1903 in Budapest, † 6 July 1986) was a Hungarian- American chemist who worked mainly in the field of adsorption and chemisorption on surfaces of solids.

Life and work

Brunauer spent his youth in Budapest in simple ratios. The mother was a seamstress and the blind father unemployed. In 1921 Brunauer emigrated to the United States, where he lived with an uncle.

Brunauer studied chemistry at Columbia University, where he was a first degree in 1925 received a bachelor's degree. It was followed by a Master's degree in 1929 from George Washington University, where he met Edward Teller.

As a junior scientist Brunauer worked in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he worked with Paul Hugh Emmett. In 1930 she published a joint paper on ammonia catalysts.

Starting in 1933, took part in the Brunauer Johns Hopkins University PhD program, where he worked on iron catalysts for ammonia synthesis on the adsorption of nitrogen.

This work laid the foundation that led to the determination of the surface and finally the BET method.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed Brunauer to the U.S. Navy, where he headed the department for the development of explosives. He became known among other things, that he was able to hire Albert Einstein for a salary of 25 dollars per day as a consultant for the U.S. Navy.

After the war he moved in 1951 to the Portland Cement Association, where he was manager of basic research.

In 1965, his academic career began as chairman of the chemistry department of the Clarkson College of Technology, where he was also the first director of the Institute for Colloid and Surface Chemistry. 1973 Brunauer became Professor Emeritus.