Holger F. Struer

Who is Holger F. Struer?

Holger F. Struer was a Danish chemist and founder of "H. Struers Chemiske Laboratorium" in 1875 at Skindergade 38, the centre of Copenhagen. Struers introduced in 1943 Micropol, a new principle for electrolytic polishing which made the preparation process within metallography more controlled in order to achieve better preparation results.

The development of metallography was a continuous struggle to find better and easier methods to prepare metal surfaces for microstructure observation. Struers based his new principle for electrolytic polishing on Count Alois von Beckh Widmanstätten and his early experiments from the beginning of the 19th century that revealed the structure of iron from a meteor which had come down earlier in the century. He noticed that the structure could better be seen on plane, fine polished surfaces. By pouring nitric acid over the surface and letting it react for some time, he actually made a deep etch which developed the macrostructure. Pieces etched this way were used for printing the structure directly on paper. These "nature prints" turned "metallography" into lithography. All these experiments did not lead to any evaluation of the microstructure, but were limited to the macrostructure.