Charles Martin Hall

Early years

Charles Martin Hall was born to Herman Bassett Hall and Sophronia H. Brooks on December 6, 1863, in Thompson, Ohio. Charles's father, Herman, graduated from Oberlin College in 1847, and studied for three years at the Oberlin Theological Seminary, where he met his future wife, Sophronia Brooks. They married in 1849, and the next ten years were spent in missionary work in Jamaica, where the first five of their eight children were born. They returned to Ohio in 1860, after the outbreak of the Civil War forced the closing of foreign missions. Charles Hall had two brothers and five sisters; one brother died in infancy. One of his sisters was chemist Julia Brainerd Hall (1859–1925), who helped him in his research.

Hall began his education at home, and he was taught to read at an early age by his mother. At the age of six, he was using his father's 1840s college chemistry book as a reader. At age 8, he entered public school, and progressed rapidly.

Hall's family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, in 1873. He spent three years at Oberlin High School, and a year at Oberlin Academy in preparation for college. During this time, he demonstrated his aptitude for chemistry and invention, carrying out experiments in the kitchen and the woodshed attached to his house. In 1880, at the age of 16, he enrolled at Oberlin College.

In his second term, Hall attended, with considerable interest, Oberlin Professor Frank Fanning Jewett's lecture on aluminum; it was here that Jewett displayed the sample of aluminum he had obtained from Friedrich Wöhler at Göttingen, and remarked, "if anyone should invent a process by which aluminum could be made on a commercial scale, not only would he be a benefactor to the world, but would also be able to lay up for himself a great fortune".