Hermann August Seger

Hermann Seger (1832–1893) was a German ceramicist who is widely credited with pioneering the development of the pyrometric cone, which enabled the rapid growth of the ceramic industry around the turn of the century.

Biography Seger was born in the German Province of Posen in 1839 to wealthy parents and studied under various ceramic scientists at the Königliche Bauakademie in Berlin (now Technische Universität Berlin).

After graduating he managed an alum and vitriol processing plant at Kreuzkirche at Neuwied on the Rhine. In 1868 he graduated from the University of Rostock and briefly managed a chemical factory in Sweden.

In 1890 Seger left the KPM due to declining health and spent the remainder of his life focused on editing his trade journal Thonindustrie-Zeitung. He died on 30 October 1893.

He created the Seger Formula method of glaze formulations, which is sometimes referred to as the Unity Molecular Formula. It functions on the basis of viewing glazes not by their raw ingredient composition, but instead by their elemental composition by mole per cent.