During times of political turmoil, history often gets rewritten, erased, or lost. That is what happened to the legacy of Jan Czochralski, a Polish chemist whose contributions to semiconductor manufacturing were expunged after World War II.
In 1916 he invented a method for growing single crystals of semiconductors, metals, and synthetic gemstones. The process, now known as the Czochralski method, allows scientists to have more control over a semiconductor’s quality.
After the war ended, Czochralski was falsely accused by the Polish government of collaborating with the Germans and betraying his country, according to an article published by the International Union of Crystallography. The allegation apparently ended his academic career as a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology and led to the erasure of his name and work from the school’s records.
He died in 1953 in obscurity in his hometown of Kcynia.
The Czochralski method was honored in 2019 with an IEEE Milestone for enabling the development of semiconductor devices and modern electronics. Administered by the IEEE History Center and supported by donors, the Milestone program recognizes outstanding technical developments around the world.
Inspired by the IEEE recognition, Czochralski’s grandson Fred Schmidt and his great-grandnephew Sylwester Czochralski launched the JanCZ project. The initiative, which aims to educate the public about Czochralski’s life and scientific impact, maintains two websites—one in English and the other in Polish.
“Discovering the [IEEE Milestone] plaque changed my entire mission,” Schmidt says. “It inspired me to engage with Poland, my family history, and my grandfather’s story [on] a more personal level. The [Milestone] is an important award of validation and recognition. It’s a big part of what I’m building my entire case and my story around as I promote the Jan Czochralski legacy and history to the Western world.”
Schmidt, who lives in Texas, is seeking to produce a biopic, translate a Polish biography to English, and turn the chemist’s former homes in Kcynia and Warsaw into museums. The Jan Czochralski Remembrance Foundation has been established by Schmidt to help fund the projects.
The life of the Polish chemist
Before Czochralski’s birth in 1885, Kcynia became part of the German Empire in 1871. Although his family identified as Polish and spoke the language at home, they couldn’t publicly acknowledge their culture, Schmidt says.
When it came time for Czochralski to go to university, rather than attend one in Warsaw, he did what many Germans did at the time: He attended one in Berlin.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in metal chemistry in 1907 from the Königlich Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin), he joined Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft in Berlin as an engineer.
Czochralski experimented with materials to find new formulations that could improve the electrical cables and machinery during the early electrical age, according to a Material World article.
While investigating the crystallization rates of metal, Czochralski accidentally dipped his pen into a pot of molten tin instead of an inkwell. A tin filament formed on the pen’s tip—which he found interesting. Through research, he proved that the filament was a single crystal. His discovery prompted him to experiment with the bulk production of semiconductor crystals.
His paper on what he called the Czochralski method was published in 1918 in the German chemistry journal Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie, but he never found an application for it. (The method wasn’t used until 1948, when Bell Labs engineers Gordon Kidd Teal and J.B. Little adapted it to grow single germanium crystals for their semiconductor production, according to Material World.)
Czochralski continued working in metal science, founding and directing a research laboratory in 1917 at Metallgesellschaft in Frankfurt. In 1919 he was one of the founding members of the German Society for Metals Science, in Sankt Augustin. He served as its president until 1925.
Around that time he developed an innovation that led to his wealth and fame, Schmidt says. Called “B-metal,” the metal alloy was a less expensive alternative to the tin used in manufacturing railroad carriage bearings. Czochralski’s alloy was patented by the German railway Deutsche Bahn and played a significant role in advancing rail transport in Germany, Poland, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, according to Material World.
“Launching this initiative has been fulfilling and personally rewarding work. My grandfather died in obscurity without ever seeing the results of his work, and my mother spent her entire adult life trying to right these wrongs.”
The achievement brought Czochralski many opportunities. In 1925 he became president of the GDMB Society of Metallurgists and Miners, in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany. Henry Ford invited Czochralski to visit his factories and offered him the position of director at Ford’s new aluminum factory in Detroit. Czochralski declined the offer, longing to return to Poland, Schmidt says. Instead, Czochralski left Germany to become a professor of metallurgy and metal research at the Warsaw University of Technology, at the invitation of Polish President Ignacy Mościcki.
“During World War II, the Nazis took over his laboratories at the university,” Schmidt says. “He had to cooperate with them or die. At night, he and his team [at the university] worked with the Polish resistance and the Polish Army to fight the Nazis.”
After the war ended, Czochralski was arrested in 1945 and charged with betraying Poland. Although he was able to clear his name, damage was done. He left Warsaw and returned to Kcynia, where he ran a small pharmaceutical business until he died in 1953, according to the JanCZ project.
Launching the JanCZ project
Schmidt was born in Czochralski’s home in Kcynia in 1955, two years after his grandfather’s death. He was named Klemens Jan Borys Czochralski. He and his mother (Czochralski’s youngest daughter) emigrated in 1958 when Schmidt was 3 years old, moving to Detroit as refugees. When he was 13, he became a U.S. citizen. He changed his name to Fred Schmidt after his mother married his stepfather.
Schmidt heard stories about his grandfather from his mother his whole life, but he says that “as a teenager, I was just interested in hanging out with my friends, going to school, and working. I really didn’t want much to do with it [family history], because it seemed hard to believe.”
Portrait of Jan Czochralski Byla Sobie Fotka
In 2013 Polish scientist Pawel E. Tomaszewski contacted Schmidt to interview him for a Polish TV documentary about his grandfather.
“He had corresponded with my mother [who’d died 20 years earlier] for previously published biographies about Czochralski,” Schmidt says. “I had some boxes of her things that I started going through to prepare for the interview, and I found original manuscripts and papers he [his grandfather] published about his work.”
The TV crew traveled to the United States and interviewed him for the documentary, Schmidt says, adding, “It was the first time I’d ever had to reckon with the Jan Czochralski story, my connection, my original name, and my birthplace. It was both a very cathartic and traumatic experience for me.”
Ten years after participating in the documentary, Schmidt says, he decided to reconnect with his roots.
“It took me that long to process it [what he learned] and figure out my role in this story,” he says. “That really came to life with my decision to reapply for Polish citizenship, reacquaint myself with the country, and meet my family there.”
In 2024 he visited the Warsaw University of Technology and saw the IEEE Milestone plaque honoring his grandfather’s contribution to technology.
“Once I learned what the Milestone award represented, I thought, Whoa, that’s big,” he says.
Sharing the story with the Western world
Since 2023, Schmidt has dedicated himself to publicizing his grandfather’s story, primarily in the West because he doesn’t speak Polish. Sylwester Czochralski manages the work in Poland, with Schmidt’s input.
Most of the available writing about Czochralski is in Polish, Schmidt says, so his goal is to “spread his story to English-speaking countries.”
He aims to do that, he says, through a biography written by Tomaszewski in Polish that will be translated to English, and a film. The movie is in development by Sywester Banaszkiewicz, who produced and directed the 2014 documentary in Poland. Schmidt says he hopes the movie will be similar to the 2023 biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who helped develop the world’s first nuclear weapons during World War II.
The English and Polish versions of the website take visitors through Czochralski’s life and his work. They highlight media coverage of the chemist, including newspaper articles, films, and informational videos posted by YouTube creators.
Schmidt is working with the Czochralski Research and Development Institute in Toruń, Poland, to purchase his grandfather’s home in Kcynia and the mansion he lived in while he was a professor in Warsaw. The institute is a collection of labs and initiatives dedicated to honoring the chemist’s work.
“It’s going to be a long, fun journey, and we have a lot of momentum,” Schmidt says of his plans to turn the residences into museums.
“Launching this initiative has been fulfilling and personally rewarding work,” he says. “My grandfather died in obscurity without ever seeing the results of his work, and my mother spent her entire adult life trying to right these wrongs.
“I’m on an accelerated course to make it [her goal] happen to the best of my ability.”
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