1865-1923
Electrical Engineer

Early Life in Europe.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), in 1865. He was educated at the University of Breslau, whose physics department had a solid reputation in electrophysics, and was a doctoral candidate in mathematics. Felix Auerbach, his professor of mathematical physics, encouraged all of his students to develop mathematical theories of how specific pieces of electrical equipment work. Steinmetz was forced to leave Breslau because of his socialist politics and went to Zurich, Switzerland, where he enrolled for a semester of engineering at the Polytechnic Institute. While there he published his first two articles on electrical engineering: one on the resistance of conductors, the other a mathematical theory of the transformer. When the Breslau police issued a warrant for his arrest in 1889, he decided to immigrate to the United States.

First Years in America.

In the...