Robert Durrer

Who was Robert Durrer?

Robert Durrer was a Swiss engineer who developed the basic oxygen steelmaking process. The process was successfully tested by Durrer in 1948 and further refined and implemented by VÖEST and ÖAMG in Austria, independently of the "big steel" establishment of the United States and the Ruhr.

Durrer graduated from the Aachen University in 1915. He stayed in Germany and in 1928 accepted the chair of the Professor of Metallurgy at the Berlin Institute of Technology. In 1943 Durrer returned from Nazi Germany to Switzerland and was appointed to the board of Roll AG, the country's largest steelmaker. Durrer teamed up with Heinrich Heilbrugge and ran a series of experiments that established commercial viability of basic oxygen metallurgy. In 1947 Durrer ordered a small experimental converter from the United States, and on April 1, 1948 Durrer and Heilbrugge produced their first oxygen-blown steel.

In the summer of 1948 Roll AG and two Austrian state-owned companies, VÖEST and ÖAMG, agreed to commercialize the Durrer process.