George Washington Goetz was born in Milwaukee on February 17, 1855. Even at a young age he showed interest in scientific experiments and embarked on extensive self-instruction. While working as a telegrapher at the Milwaukee Iron Company, 1870-1876, he was encouraged to begin formal scientific studies. In October, 1876, he entered the School of Mines in Berlin, where he studied for four years, graduating with honors. During vacations he traveled, visiting mines and iron and steel works in Europe.
From 1881 to 1888 Goetz was engaged as a chemist at the Otis Steel Company in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1885 he went to Europe with S. T. Wellman of Otis Steel to study the process for making open-hearth basic steel, which Goetz subsequently first introduced successfully in the United States.
In 1890 Goetz established a Milwaukee office as a consulting metallurgist and engineer and worked for some of the most important mining and metal concerns in the world, including the Illinois Steel Company, Westinghouse Company, Wellman Iron and Steel Company, and the Fried Krupp Works at Essen, Germany. He also conducted many experiments in his chemical and electrical laboratory there.
George Goetz died on January 15, 1897. During his short lifetime he had registered eighteen patents and had become one of the best-known and most respected metallurgists in the United States. He was survived by his wife, Else Luedecke, whom he had married in Berlin in 1886, and their three children, Werner, George, and Elsie.
(The above biography was primarily written by Marcia Peterson, in 1967 a student at the University of Wisconsin Library School.)
