Carl Joseph Bayer, a German chemist working…

Carl Joseph Bayer, a German chemist working in St. Petersburg, develops a process that improves the method for making alumina from bauxite ores low in silica content, a step necessary before the newly-discovered Hall-Heroult process can be applied.

The Bayer process (which will be widely employed throughout the next century), patented in in 1888, completes the foundation for a commercially feasible aluminum industry.