Count Alois von Beckh Widmanstätten (13 July 1754 – 10 June 1849) was a printer and mineralogist from the Holy Roman Empire and then the Austrian Empire. His name is sometimes given as Alois von Beckh-Widmannstätten or Aloys Joseph Franz Xaver Beck Edler von Widmanstätten. He is known for recognizing a unique pattern of cross-hatching lines on the surface of iron-rich meteorites, now called Widmanstätten patterns, resulting from the cooling and crystallization of interstitial minerals. A crater on the Moon is named after Widmanstätten.

Working life

Von Widmanstätten was born in Graz where his family had a printing business and was trained in the printing art by his father. His family owned exclusive printing rights in the Steiermark province, but this was lost in 1784 and Alois sold the business in 1807. In 1804, he ran a spinning mill in Pottendorf, Austria. In 1806 he was invited by the emperor to head a newly founded Imperial Technical Museum or Fabriksproduktenkabinett begun in 1807. From 1808, he was the director of the Imperial Porcelain works in Vienna.

Widmanstätten pattern

While working at the Fabriksproduktenkabinett, he began to examine iron meteorites along with Karl von Schreibers. They polished and etched the surface of iron meteorites with dilute nitric acid and noticed that it revealed a patterning of cross-hatched lines that came to be called Widmanstätten patterns. He examined by flame-heating a slab of Hraschina meteorite. The different iron alloys of meteorites oxidized at different rates during heating, causing color and luster differences. Cohn, E., Meteoritenkunde [The study of meteorites] (Stuttgart, Germany: E. Schweizerbart, 1894), pp. 40–41. From pp. 40–41: ''"Von hervorragender Bedeutung für das Studium des Nickeleisen wurde jedoch erst die Entdeckung des Directors der kaiserlichen Porcellanfabrik in Wien, Alois von Widmanstätten, im Jahre 1808. Als er auf Veranlassung von Schreibers prüfen wollte, wie sich eine polirte Platte von Hraschina beim starken Erhitzen verhalte, erhielt keine einheitliche Anlauffarbe, sondern Partien mit verschiedenen Anlauffarben, welche regelmässig angeordnet waren und zierliche Zeichnungen lieferten. … Bald darauf bewirkte er die oberflächliche Oxydation durch Behandlung mit Salpetersäure statt durch Erhitzung, untersuchte nach dieser Richtung noch eine Reihe anderer Eisen (Mexico, Elbogen, Lenarto) und benutzte solche polirten und geätzten Platten direct zur Vervielfältigung durch Druck ... . Damit war nachgewiesen, dass in vielen Meteoreisen das Nickeleisen nicht eine homogene Masse ist, wie es ohne nähere Untersuchung den Anschein hat, sondern dass es sich aus Theilen von verschiedener Oxydirbarkeit aufbaut. Die beim Ätzen entstehenden Figuren wurden bald allgemein nach dem Entdecker als Widmanstätten'sche Figuren bezeichnet."'' (Of paramount importance for the study of nickel-iron [meteorites], however, was the discovery of the director of the imperial porcelain factory in Vienna, Alois von Widmanstätten, in 1808. When, at Schreibers' urging, he wanted to test how a polished slice of the Hraschina [meteorite] behaved during strong heating, [it] didn't attain a uniform color during warming; rather, [there appeared] parts with different colors during warming, which were regularly ordered and yielded fine patterns of lines. … Soon thereafter he produced the surface oxidation by treatment with nitric acid instead of heat; he investigated in this way a series of other iron [meteorites] ([from] Mexico, Elbogen [now: Loket, Czech Republic], Lenarto [now in Slovakia]) and used such polished and etched slices to reproduce [impressions of the Widmanstätten patterns] directly by printing [i.e., by applying ink to the etched slices] …. Thereby [it] was proved that in many meteoric irons, the nickel-iron is not a homogeneous mass, as it appears without closer investigation, but that it formed from parts of varying susceptibility to oxidation. The figures arising during etching were soon generally named, after the discoverer, "Widmanstätten figures.") In 1813 he made imprints of these structures with printing ink and paper. These were unpublished during his life. A print of the structures from the Hraschina meteorite collected in 1751 was used in a supplement to the book Über Feuer-Meteore, und über die mit denselben herabgefallenen Massen of Ernst Chladni which was published by Schreibers in 1820 as Beiträge zur Geschichte und Kenntniss meteorischer Stein und Metallmassen. Schreibers named the structure after Widmanstätten and the term is widely used in metallurgy. The Widmanstätten pattern had been observed previously, in 1804, by the English mineralogist William (Guglielmo) Thomson. During the period that he spent in Naples, he discovered these figures by bathing a Krasnojarsk meteorite in nitric acid for the purpose of removing rust and he published his discovery in French in the Bibliothèque Britannique, but Thomson's publication escaped Schreibers' notice.

Named after him