Charles Martin Hall (1863-1914), American metallurgist and inventor of the modern process of aluminium production. Hall was born in Thompson, Ohio. While a student at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, he started researching aluminum, a strong, lightweight, non-tarnishing metal. Aluminum never appears as a pure ore in the earth’s crust, and 19th-century researchers would derive aluminum from other compounds using a variety of elaborate chemical processes. Aluminum was only available in limited quantities and was prohibitively expensive for general industrial use. Hall believed that electrolyzing a mixture of molten alumina (aluminum oxide) and cryolite (Na3AlF6) could create larger amounts of aluminum at a smaller cost, and he made these studies the subject of his undergraduate thesis.

Hall’s initial experiments with the new process were so promising that his father equipped a small shop for him at home so he might continue his research. On February 23, 1886, less than a year after his graduation, Hall made the first small nuggets of aluminum by electrolysis of a solution of bauxite in a fused salt. The method was discovered almost at the same time by a young French metallurgist, Paul L. T. Héroult. The two young men became friends and together perfected the Hall-Héroult process, upon which the modern aluminum industry is based.

Initially, Hall had great difficulty in finding producers and customers for his new process. In 1888, Hall contacted the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, which later became the Aluminum Company of America. Hall served as a vice president of the company until his death. Hall was the winner in 1911 of the Perkin Medal for Achievement in applied chemistry. He was a major benefactor of Oberlin College.