The Ernst Berl Papers contain correspondence, professional files, patent files, financial records, personal files, papers and speeches, and publications of Austrian chemical engineer Ernst Berl. During World War One, he produced explosives and chemical weapons. In 1919, Berl accepted a position at the Technical University of Darmstadt as a professor. He enjoyed a distinguished career at this institution, conducting research on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, synthetic fabrics, chemistry of fuels, sulfuric acid, and methods of chemical analysis. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Berl and other Jewish faculty members were dismissed from their university posts. That same year, he moved to the United States when he was appointed Research Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

At Carnegie Tech, Berl enjoyed a distinguished and productive scientific career. He conducted research on a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to cellulose chemistry, chemistry of fuels, and methods of chemical distillation. In addition to being a prominent chemical engineer, Berl was a prolific inventor who was awarded a number of patents over the course of his career. In 1931, he was awarded a United States patent for the “Berl Saddle,” a ceramic distillation tower packing which is still widely used in the chemical industry today. In 1940, he invented a method of synthesizing coal and oil from plant material at a relatively low cost.

A small selection of the collection has been digitized.