Dyckerhoff, Walter Gustav Robert

Chemist

Born: 27.12.1897 in Höchst am Main

died: 08.06.1977 in Wiesbaden

After leaving school, Dyckerhoff took an active part in the First World War as an ensign and was wounded. After his recovery and discharge from the army, he first studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Munich, followed by chemistry and mineralogy in Munich and Frankfurt am Main, where he received his doctorate in 1924.

In 1925 he joined the company Dyckerhoff & Söhne. After a trip to South America, he worked for nine months in Washington in the "Bureau of Standards" and was involved in the mechanization of quarry operations in American cement works. In 1931, he joined the new Portland cement works Dyckerhoff & Wicking AG as a board member. Under his management, the entire quarry operation was fully automated. In 1931, he succeeded in producing Dyckerhoff Weiss, the first German cement.

He wrote scientific publications on the chemical and mineralogical processes involved in setting cement. As part of the four-year plan of October 1936, he advocated the extraction of pure alumina for the production of aluminum from domestic raw materials - e.g. slag - as bauxite could not be imported. The Séailles-Dyckerhoff process he developed was used to produce cement as well as alumina.

Under the impressions of the first period after the Second World War, he first went to Switzerland in November 1946 and emigrated from there to Argentina with his family. In Buenos Aires, he dedicated himself to the production of white cement as director of "Tyngatu SA" and was a partner in the CADIO optical products factory together with the Munich-based company Rodenstock. Dyckerhoff returned to Wiesbaden in 1972.