Tammann, Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon
TAMMANN, GUSTAV HEINRICH JOHANN APOLLON
(b. Yamburg “now Kingisepp, R.S.F.S.R.”, St. Petersburg gubernia, Russia, 16/28 May 1861; d. Göttingen, Germany, 17 December 1938)
Tammann belonged to the generation of scientists who created the discipline of physical chemistry. He was a founder of metallography and of metallurgy, and he pioneered the study of solid state chemical reactions.
Tammann was born into a German-speaking, Protestant family from Livonia, the members of which had belonged to the untitled Russian nobility since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century. His father, Heinrich Tammann, was municipal physician in Yamburg and in Gorigoretsk, Mogilev gubernia (now Gorki, Belorussian S.S.R.), and professor of practical medicine at the agricultural college (now Belorussian Agricultural Academy) in Gorigoretsk. He was appointed to the faculty of the University of Moscow but died just before assuming the post. Tammann was then only four years old, and the responsibility for his education fell entirely upon his mother, the former Mathilde Schiünmann. She returned to her native Dorpat (now Tartu) and skillfully overcame the considerable financial difficulties facing her. After five years of private tutoring, Tammann entered the Dorpat Gymnasium, where, despite poor grades in languages, he was regularly one of the top students in his class. At the age of fourteen, he was offered a promising military career as a protégé of Friedrich Graf von Berg, a Russian field marshal, but his mother rejected the proposal.
Tammann began to study chemistry at Dorpat in 1879. Even before he wrote his Kandidatenschrift (on the vapor pressure of solutions), which he submitted in 1883, he succeeded Wilhelm Ostwald as second assistant to Carl Schmidt, a former student of Justus Liebig and of Friedrich Wöhler. He also taught at the local girl’s high school and at the county school. A chemist at Dorpat during this period could expect to find work only in problems related to medicine or agriculture. Consequently, at the urging of Johann Lemberg, Tammann decided to specialize in plant physiology, an area to which he was introduced by Gustav von Bunge. In one of a series of papers in this field (1895) he correctly explained the existence of optimal temperatures for enzyme reactions as the result of two independent processes, each of which is temperature-dependent but responds oppositely to temperature changes; the catalytic reaction and the thermal inactivation of the enzyme. Although Tammann retained a strong interest in fermentation processes, membranes, and osmotic pressure, it soon became apparent that he was destined to work in other fields.
Tammann first studied topics on the boundary between chemistry and physics in the autumn of 1883, when, continuing the work of Adolph Wüllner, he began to determine molecular weights from the lowering of vapor pressure. This research provided the basis for his master’s essay, which, when he defended it in 1885, incurred strong criticism from Arthur von Oettingen. The high cost of printing prevented Tammann from broadening this research into a doctoral dissertation. Instead, he submitted a thesis on the metamerism of the metaphosphates; and in the same year (1887) he qualified as a university lecturer. In 1889 he worked in Helmholtz’s institute at Charlottenburg and with Ostwald at Leipzig. At Leipzig, Tammann met Arrhenius and Nernst, with whom he maintained close friendships throughout his life. His relations with Ostwald, however, always remained distant. Tammann’s promotion to first assistant brought him back to Dorpat, where he advanced with unusual rapidity. In 1890 he became Dozent (refusing, in the same year, an offer of an extraordinary professorship at Giessen). In 1892 he was appointed extraordinary professor and succeeded Schmidt as institute director, and in 1894 he was named full professor.
During his years at Dorpat, Tammann traveled extensively. In 1889 – 1890 he worked with Nernst at Göttingen on a study of the pressure at which hydrogen is liberated from solutions by the action of metals. He visited Russia several times, partly to learn Russian, on the advice of his friend Mendeleev, who followed his research with great interest. On one of these trips Tammann met Anna Mitscherling, the daughter of a German banker in St. Petersburg. They were married in 1890 and had one son and two daughters. In 1894 Tammann went to the Netherlands, where he made valuable contacts with van’t Hoff, Kamerlingh Onnes, Roozeboom, and Jakob van Bemmelen. It was on this occasion that he developed his lifelong interest in heterogeneous equilibria. Also in 1894, during a trip to Nizhni Novgorod, he was stimulated to undertake research on petroleum, during which he discovered several new naphthalenes1. In 1897 Tammann traveled to Stockholm, where he saw Berzelius’ instruments in such desolate condition that he published an appeal in the Chemiker-Zeitung, which prompted the founding of the Berzelius Museum2. While visiting the World Exposition at Paris in 1900, he studied the French metallurgical industry and became acquainted with Le Châtelier and his techniques.
At the urging of Nernst, Felix Klein, and the distinguished Prussian minister Friedrich Althoff, a chair of inorganic chemistry (the second in Germany) and a new institute were established at Göttingen in 1903. Tammann was chosen to head the institute, and he remained loyal to Göttingen despite several attractive offers. In 1909 his friend Boris Golitsyn secured his election as full member of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, and, upon his retirement in 1930, he was invited to Riga.
Industry hoped for useful results from the new institute, and Tammann was determined to obtain them by means of a systematic examination of the inorganic materials of daily life. At first he wanted to specialize in silicate chemistry; but a discussion with Arthur Louis Day, who had just received a large grant from the Carnegie Institution for the construction of a geophysical laboratory, convinced him that he should give up this idea and concentrate his attention on metals and glasses. Гammann continued his program of research when Nernst went to Berlin in 1905, and he succeeded to the latter’s professorship at Göttingen in 1907, thus becoming director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry. After his retirement several scientific organizations and metal companies continued to finance Tammann’s research, thus enabling him to engage from three to five assistants until 1937.
A giant not only in stature but also in health and capacity for work, Tammann regularly worked in his laboratory for ten hours a day. He was, nevertheless, devoted to his family. Moreover, he possessed an excellent knowledge of Goethe’s writings and of Russian history, and he was an ardent swimmer. He restricted his friendships to a few colleagues, with one of whom, Otto Wallach, he would take a walk every Sunday. Tammann was unconventional, avoided all formality, and loved simplicity; yet he inspired respect in all who met him. His relations with co-workers and students, from whom he demanded total commitment, were forthright and often brusque; but basically they were characterized by a deep humanity. Many anecdotes illustrating his unusual sense of humor survive. It served him as an effective weapon when he felt criticism to be in order.
Tammann received many honors, prizes, and awards. He was both a Russian and a Prussian privy councillor. He was awarded four honorary doctorates and was an honorary citizen of the Technische Hochschule of Stuttgart. He belonged to various learned societies, notably the Academies of Berlin, Göttingen, Halle, and Vienna, and was an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Bunsen Society, the German Society for Metallurgy, the Royal Chemical Society, and (with Rutherford and Einstein) the British Institute of Metals.
Tammann’s more than five hundred scientific writings extend over a very broad range of subjects and constitute a varied sequence devoted to both fundamental problems and detailed questions. Accordingly, Wilhelm Biltz applied to Tammann a remark of Goethe’s: “I have chiseled giants out of marble and cut tiny figurines out of ivory.” It is impossible in a few pages to do justice to this rich body of work, which has stimulated research in countless ways.
The theory of dilute solutions proposed by van’t Hoff and Arrhenius left an important question unanswered. This deficiency greatly troubled Tammann, who on this question followed the views of Mendeleev. Specifically, in this theory the solutes were considered, by means of a schematic analogy, as ideal gases; however, the reciprocal effects on the were solvent neglected. In order to take these effects into account, Tammann developed the theory of internal pressure in homogeneous systems. According to his theory, the solution behaves like the solvent; the pressure is replaced, in both molecular and ionic solutions, by an attractive force between the solvent and the solute. In experiments begun in 1893 Tammann obtained pressures as high as about 4,000 atmospheres, somewhat greater than those previously reached by Émile Amagat. In 1907 Tammann collected in book form the results of many experiments on various solvents and presented the derivation of his theory. He showed that the temperature-dependence of many properties of solutions (including specific heats, viscosity, surface tension, and optical constants), as well as the pressure-dependence of their conductivity and compressibility, could be understood in the light of his new theory, which has been quite generally confirmed. In a work on compressibility published in 1895, Tammann employed a formula that he attributed to P. G. Tait and that has since been widely known under the latter’s name. Only recently has it been pointed out that Tammann’s formula is not at all identical with the one given by Tait in 18883.
The field of heterogeneous equilibria–that is, the behavior of matter as a function of pressure, temperature, and chemical composition–was opened by Willard Gibbs’s formulation of the phase rule; but it was van der Waals and, above all, Roozeboom who first recognized its outstanding practical significance. When Tammann entered this field in 1895, he treated the problem in its most general form before turning to applications; this allowed him to make substantial contributions to the systematization of inorganic chemistry as well as to the improvement of industrial production methods. The starting point of his research was twofold: the experiments of Thomas Andrews and Louis Cailletet on the equilibrium relationships between the liquid and vapor phases and the theoretical interpretation of the triple point. Many scientists, including Ostwald, believed that a continuous transition exists between the liquid and solid states corresponding to that between the liquid and vapor states. Tammann broke sharply with this conception in 1896. Supporting his argument with experiments and drawing on thermodynamical considerations, he put forward his own views in a monograph published in 1903. He asserted that the melting-point curve cannot end in a critical point; that the pressure-temperature diagram is basically a closed curve; and that, accordingly, all transitions from the crystalline state to other phases must be discontinuous.
Tammann modified his theory in a second monograph (1922), in which he stated that the melting curves must show a maximum (which under certain circumstances might not be a true maximum) and that, as a result, in typical cases the melting temperature ought to decrease again at very high pressures. He confirmed this prediction experimentally in the case of Glauber’s salt, but the example was not entirely conclusive. Although several further, unobjectionable examples became known, it was later shown by P. W. Bridgman that up to extremely high pressures, melting-point curve maximums are the exception. This finding meant that Tammann’s theory was of little practical significance. Nevertheless, it led him to the insight that the accepted division of matter into three states of aggregation (gas, liquid, and solid) was unsuitable. Anticipating the results of radiography, he postulated instead a twofold division consisting of an isotropic phase (gas, liquid, and amorphic) and an anisotropic phase (crystalline).
Parallel to this research was the series of studies that Tammann began in 1897 on the transition from the isotropic to the anisotropic phase. He showed that crystal growth depends on three independent quantities: the number of nuclei (that is, the number of crystallization centers), the crystallization velocity, and the heat flow. He pursued the study of these fundamental crystallization laws under varied external conditions and on a large number of substances. To a certain extent Tammann’s theoretical work in this field culminated in the book Aggregatzustände (1922). Starting with notions taken from atomic theory and thermodynamics, he derived a new definition of phase stability; in this undertaking Gibb’s concept of free enthalpy provided the most significant criterion.
Guided by only a few preliminary studies (for example, those of Floris Osmond), Tammann developed a method of determining the chemical composition of a compound from the form of its cooling curve. By 1903 he had perfected the indispensable method of “thermic analysis,” which has since been used successfully over a broad range of applications. Tammann employed it to explain systems composed of sulfides and chlorides as well as mixed crystal systems. Most important, however, it provided him with the means of opening up and systematically exploring an important field of inorganic chemistry, the intermetallic compounds.
Until this time it had not been possible to determine whether the fusion of two metals produced compounds of these metals, mixed crystals, or heterogeneous crystal mixtures. When Tammann began his studies of metallic compounds in 1903, little was known about them except what could be found in the works of Le Châtelier, Osmond, Roberts-Austen, C. T. Heycock and F. H. Neville, E. Heyn, F. Wüst, and N. S. Kurnakov, to which he referred. He systematically investigated the field through a combined application of thermic analysis and the microscopic analysis of sections, a technique in use since its development by Schreibers and Widmannstätten. Tammann’s goal was to examine the 190 possible series of alloys of twenty common metals taken in mixing proportions that varied in steps of 10 percent by weight. (The total number of alloys was therefore 1,900.) By 1906, with the help of his students the project had progressed to the point that he was able to publish “Ueber die Fähigkeit der Elemente, miteinander Verbindungen zu bilden,” which began at the point that Berzelius had reached in his work on the subject. In this article Tammann proved that, in general, the valence relationships and stoichiometric laws of the salts are not valid for metal-compound crystals. He also recognized that the alloys often behave like mixed crystals. World War I was a quiet period for Tammann, who used these years to probe more deeply into the nature of the mixed crystals.
Tammann’s research in this area culminated in 1919 in his frequently cited publication on the resistance limits of binary systems as a function of the mixing proportion; in it he set forth the so-called n/8 law, which in its most rudimentary form had been used since the Middle Ages in the separation of gold and silver by means of aquafortis (nitric acid). From this law Tammann concluded that the atoms in mixed crystals are not arrayed on a statistical basis but are arranged in accordance with definite mathematical relationships. He realized that his theory of “superlattices” in mixed crystals could be definitively demonstrated only through radiographic inspection. His prediction concerning the superlattices was, in fact, corroborated radiographically for the gold-copper system in 1925 by C. H. Johansson and J. O. Linde. The conjectured relation between resistance limits and superlattices, however, has not proved to be correct; this was first suspected by G. Masing and was later demonstrated, for example, in the gold-silver system.
As Tammann progressed in the interpretation of the chemical properties of alloys, he became increasingly interested in the physical and chemical behavior of metals, in their crystal structure, in their electrical conductivity, and in their mechanical and other properties. Through his study of these topics he opened the field of metal physics. Tammann first addressed himself to two questions that preoccupied him for the rest of his life: What makes it possible for metals in the solid state to be worked? Why do properties of metals change so drastically during the process of cold-working?
Before Tammann began his research in this area, Otto Mügge had shown in the case of salts and transparent minerals that mechanical stresses in crystals produce displacement of their parts along the slip planes. Further, J. A. Ewing and W. Rosenhain had already begun to furnish the first answers concerning the plastic working of metals. Tammann’s extended series of works on this subject, which have greatly influenced the techniques of metalworking, began in 1910 with a publication written in collaboration with Otto Faust. Having derived the malleability of metals in the solid state from crystallographic slipping, Tammann, accordingly, saw crystalline rearrangement as the cause of the alterations in the mechanical properties of metals during cold-working, especially the hardening.
It was known that through tempering (heating), the values that certain properties of metals have acquired in the course of being cold-worked return to the levels at which they were before the cold-working began. Tammann explained this phenomenon–which Sorby called recrystallization–as the result of the accumulation of energy during cold-working and of the growth of certain individual crystals at the expense of others. Through repeated recrystallizations Tammann was able to alter the size of crystal grains in metals within broad limits, and under suitable conditions he could even grow single crystals. Such crystals normally do not grow without limit–a fact he attributed to the existence of a Zwischensubstanz, a spongelike network consisting of the impurities that always occur along the boundaries of crystal grains. This network, which Tammann isolated in 1921 by elegant etching techniques, could not yet, however, explain other changes that occur during cold-working, such as in the density, color, electrical conductivity, and chemical reactivity of the metals. Tammann conjectured that to account for these changes, it would be necessary to assume the occurrence of alterations within the atoms. Of importance in this connection was his research on the binary-state diagrams of iron and its technically important alloys, on passivity (especially of the iron-chromium alloys), and on iron carbide.
Tammann’s illuminating findings about the physical and chemical bases of the metallurgical production processes first emerged from his research on the equilibria between molten metal and slag during the cooling processes in the interior of the earth. Emil Wiechert, on the basis of observations of earthquakes, had deduced the existence of at least three layers in the earth; and in 1924, Tammann postulated the existence of an intermediary sulfide layer between the outer silicate layer and the earth’s iron-nickel core. His application of these conceptions to the techniques of steel production was an innovative and valuable contribution. Tammann also studied meteorites and silicates. In a short series of mineralogical and chemical communications issued by the institute of physical chemistry at Göttingen, he published phase diagrams of silicates and discussed the production and thermochemistry of these compounds. He later made a careful study of nontronite and kaolin. In 1925 he recognized that the concept of the molecule must be modified in dealing with silicates and that a chemical constitutional formula is not meaningful for them.
Since the 1890’s the examination of the influence of pressure and temperature on matter had directed Tammann’s attention to the phenomenon of allotropy or polymorphism. In Kristallisieren und Schmelzen (1903) he summarized his experiments on this subject and showed that the phenomenon is much more common than had been expected. His discovery of new modifications of ice (specifically, ice II and ice III) aroused intense interest; and Tammann himself thought that their discovery, along with that of resistance limits, constituted one of his two most noteworthy single scientific contributions. Tammann described the behavior of compressed liquids in 1911 in an approximate but surprisingly simple equation of state similar to one enunciated by O. Tumlirz. In 1915 he solved the much-disputed problem of the flow of glacial ice by showing that the phenomenon was the result of crystalline slipping. He had previously given an elegant theoretical refutation of the explanation proposed by Ostwald, Poynting, and Niggli, who attributed the flow to a pressure-dependent reduction in the melting point of ice.
Tammann’s research on the nature of the states of matter had repeatedly led him to consider the glass state–he used the terms “glass” and “amorphous” synonymously–but he does not seem to have started his long series of studies on the glasses until 1925, when the Society of Glass Technology invited him to write a paper on the subject. In 1933 he published a monograph containing the results of his work, most of which was carried out in collaboration with his students. One of the most surprising findings was that the specific volume of a glass depends on the pressure at which it solidifies–dramatic evidence of the extraordinary complexity of the substances. Tammann was particularly intrigued by the “softening interval,” the temperature interval within which glass changes from brittle to viscous. According to Tammann’s theory of the states of aggregation, no sudden changes in properties should occur in this temperature region. He also showed that although, under certain conditions, many physical properties do change very considerably in this interval, they always change in a continuous manner.
As early as 1911 Tammann’s experiments on diffusion in mixed crystals led him into a new field, the study of reactions of solid bodies with other solids and with gaseous substances. His findings led him to break with the old maxim corpora non agunt, nisi fluida. He determined the temperature (later named for him) at which mixtures of crystalline powders sinter and thereby laid the foundation of solid-state chemistry, a field later developed by J. A. Hedvall and W. Jander, among others. Tammann’s investigation of the tarnish that forms on metallic surfaces was of the greatest importance for the theory of oxidation. In 1919 he stated that the layer of tarnish grows parabolically with time.4 (This law was later explained theoretically by Carl Wagner.) In 1922, while examining other cases of oxidation, Tammann and Werner Köster found a logarithmic relation between the thickness of the oxidized layer and the time elapsed. The theoretical significance of this relation was not recognized, however, until forty years later.
Although many of Tammann’s works had direct technical applications, his personal goal was the development of pure science, and in the final analysis he was concerned only with the search for the laws of nature. He dismissed verbose and flashy scientific writing with the remark, “It records the artist’s earthly pilgrimage, which no one needs to know about.” He had a remarkable gift for reducing complex problems to simple questions, which he then solved by means of experiments that often were astonishingly simple. This ability was exemplified in his experiments on resistance limits and on the determination of the thickness of oxidation layers. Two other examples are the “Tammann oven,” in which a carbon tube serves as both wall and electrical heating element, and his apparatus for measuring outflowing liquids. Tammann’s theoretical work did not always attract the interest of his contemporaries; and since later research has often taken paths that diverged from those he followed, many problems that he isolated remain unsolved. Although not an especially talented lecturer, Tammann was an unusually effective teacher. By having trained more than one hundred doctoral candidates and assistants, he helped to determine the conceptions and working methods of an entire generation of chemical physicists and metallurgists.
NOTES
1. The results are set forth in a patent application.
2. See Chemiker-Zeitung,21 (1897), 654.
3. See A. T. J. Hayward, “Compressibility Equations for Liquids–A Comparative Study,” in Journal of Physics, sec. D, Applied Physics, 18 (1967), 965.
4. A “Commemorative Symposium on the Oxidation of Metals–50 Years of Research” was organized in 1970 in Atlantic City, N.J., by the Electrochemical Society. The introductory lecture, given by C. Wagner, appeared in German in Werkstoffe und Korrosion,21 (1970), 886 – 894. DECHEMA (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Chemisches Apparatewesen) organized a colloquium on the same subject, held on 23 Oct. 1970; for the lectures presented there, along with other papers on the subject, see ibid., nos. 11 – 12.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Original Works. Tammann’s posthumous papers and his autobiographical remarks written for his son, Heinrich, are in the possession of the author. Some autobiographical fragments were published in “Jugenderinnerungen eines Dorpater Chemikers,” in Eesti rohuteadlane (Tartu), nos. 9 – 10 (1930), 1029 – 1034; and in “Die Gründung des Instituts für anorganische Chemie,” in Mitteilungen des Universitätsbundes Göttingen,16, no. 1 (1934), 21 – 25; see also ibid.,17, no. 2 (1936), 42 – 45. For an account of his metallurgical works consult “Ueber die im Göttinger Institut für anorganische Chemie ausgeführten metallographischen Arbeiten,” in Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie,14 (1908), 789 – 804. The correspondence between Arrhenius (51 letters) and Tammann (122 letters) is at the Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien, Stockholm.
Tammann’s monographs are Die Dampftensionen der Lösungen, which is Mémoires de l’Académie impériale des sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, 7th ser., 35, no. 9 (1887); Kristallisieren und Schmelzen, ein Beitrag zur Lehre der Aenderungen des Aggregatzustandes(Leipzig, 1903); Ueber die Beziehungen zwischen den inneren Kräften und Eigenschaften der Lösungen (Hamburg–Leipzig, 1907); Lehrbuch der Metallographie, Chemie und Physik der Metalle und ihrer Legierungen (Leipzig–Hamburg, 1914; 2nd ed., 1921; 3rd ed., Leipzig, 1923), the 4th ed. of which, Lehrbuch der Metallkunde (Leipzig, 1932), was translated from the 3rd ed. into English by R. S. Dean and L. G. Swenson as A Textbook of Metallography (New York, 1925) and into Russian (Moscow–Leningrad, 1935); Die chemischen und galvanischen Eigenschaften von Mischkristallreihen und ihre Atomverteilung, zum Gedächtnis der Entdekkung des Isomorphismus vor 100 Jahren, a special issue of Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie (Leipzig, 1919); Aggregatzustände, die Änderung der Materie in Abhängigkeit von Druck und Temperatur (Leipzig, 1922; 2nd ed., 1923), translated into English by R. F. Mehl as The States of Aggregation (Princeton, 1925); Der Glaszustand (Leipzig, 1933), translated into Russian (Moscow, 1935); and Lehrbuch der heterogenen Gleichgewichte (Brunswick, 1934), translated into Russian (Moscow, 1935).
Tammann prepared a bibliography of his works up to 1901 that was published in G. V. Levitsky, ed., Biografichesky slovar professorov i prepodavateley Imperatorskago yurievskago, byvshago Dertpskago, universiteta, I (Yur’ev, 1902), 257 – 259. An almost complete list of Tammann’ journal articles can be found in Poggendorff, IV, 1474; V, 1240 – 1241; VI, 2610 – 2612; VIIa, 623 – 625.
The articles can be grouped into the following main categories: (1) physiology (more than 10 papers); (2) inorganic chemistry (nearly 10 papers, one of which gives for the first time the correct constitutional formula of H2O2); (3) solutions, vapor tensions, and osmosis (almost 50 papers); (4) phase rule and state of aggregation (over 70 papers); (5) metallography and metallurgy (a series of 123 [incorrectly numbered 1 – 121] “Metallographische Mitteilung” were published by him and his co-workers in Zeitschrift für anorganische Chemie [1904 – 1925]. plus about 80 additional papers): (6) glasses (about 40 papers); (7) chemical reactions in solids and the oxidation on surfaces (over 20 papers); and (8) geochemistry, silicates, and meteorites (about 15 papers).
From 1904 to 1939 Tammann was coeditor of 200 vols. of Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie.
II. Secondary Literature. On the history of Tammann’s family see Deutsches Geschlechterbuch, CXLII (Marburg, 1967), 373 – 391. The “Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Gustav Tammann” constitutes all of Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie,154 (1926). The two best evaluations of Tammann’s work as a whole are W. Biltz, “Gustav Tammann zum siebzigsten Geburtstag,” ibid.,198 (1931), 1 – 31; and W. E. Garner, “The Tammann Memorial Lecture,” in Journal of the Chemical Society (1952), 1961 – 1973. For discussions of individual aspects of Tammann’s work see A. Portevin, “La méthode d’analyse thermique et les travaux sur les alliages au laboratoire du Professeur Tammann,” in Revue de Métallurgie (Mémoires), 4 (1907) – 6 (1909); W. Fraenkel, “Die neuen Forschungen G. Tammanns über Mischkristalle,” in Naturwissenschaften,8 (1920), 161 – 166; F. Körber, “Kristallisieren und Schmelzen,” in Zeitschrift für Metallkunde,23 (1931), 134 – 137; G. Grube, “Die Forschungen G. Tammanns über die Konstitution der Legierungen,” ibid., 137 – 138; G. Masing, “Tammanns Untersuchungen über Kaltreckung, Verfestigung und Rekristallisalion.” ibid., 139 - 142; and W. Köster, “Arbeiten von G. Tammann über die chemischen Eigenschaften von Metallen und Legierungen,” ibid., 142 – 146.
The most useful obituaries of Tammann are G. Masing, “Gustav Tammann 1861 – 1938,” in Berichte der Deutschen chemischen Gesellschaft, sec. A, 73 (1940), 25 – 30; and “Gustav Tammann†,” in Zeitschrift für Elektrochemie,45 (1939), 121 – 124, also in Metall und Erz,37 (1940), 189 – 192; H. O. von Samson-Himmelstjerna, “Gustav Tammann,” in Umschau in Wissenschaft und Technik,43 (1939), 88 – 90; and an unsigned article in Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Jahresbericht for 1938 – 1939 (1939), 54 – 66. The satirical remarks on the Third Reich in W. Biltz’s obituary, “Gustav Tammann†,” in Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie,240 (Jan. 1939), 114 – 115, reveal Biltz’s political position–which was also Tammann’s–and contributed to Biltz’s early retirement. Other articles are cited in Poggendorff, VI, 2610, and VIIa, 623.
See also W. Köster, “Zum 100. Geburtstag von Gustav Tammann,” in Metall,15 (1961), 704 – 706, also in Zeitschrift für Metallkunde,52 (1961), 379 – 381. Several authentic anecdotes about Tammann are reported in J. Hausen, Was nicht in den Annalen steht, 2nd ed. (Weinheim, 1958). S. Boström’s article “Gustav Tammann,” in Baltische Hefte,10 (1964), 139 – 150, is unreliable and useful, at best, for several anecdotes.
G. A. Tammann