Adolf Martens and his contribution to materials engineering

• Adolf Martens (1850–1914) was a pioneer of materials engineering and testing.
• He developed equipment for light microscopy, metallography and materials testing.
• Adolf Martens required high accuracy in materials testing for safe materials and structures.
• He required to educate and train excellent specialists in materials engineering.
• High expertise is of fundamental importance for public safety and failure analysis.

Adolf Martens (1850–1914) was a pioneer of materials engineering. After his studies in Berlin he joined a railway company being responsible for the technical equipment. His interest for the basic mechanisms of mechanical strength and fracture of metallic materials led him to the development of the basic concepts for metallography; his papers published between 1878 and 1889 laid the fundament of this technique. In 1880 Martens changed to the Royal Industrial Academy in Berlin and by 1884 he was designated as director of the Materials Testing Laboratory at the Technical University Berlin. Under his guidance this institution acquired an excellent reputation in all relevant areas of the German industry, forming the nucleus of the Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und – prüfung (BAM) – the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing. Martens developed equipment in many different areas as mechanical testing of metallic materials and of paper, characterization of the wear behavior of materials and viscosity of lubricants. His overwhelming contribution to materials engineering was recognized as early as 1895 by Floris Osmond, who denominated martensite a metallographical constituent resulting from quenching of steels. In 2000 ISO designated the value obtained from the instrumented indentation method as Martens Hardness – HM.