Elmen, Gustav Waldemar

Gustav Waldemar Elmen, (born Dec. 22, 1876, Stockholm, Sweden—died Dec. 10, 1957, Englewood, N.J., U.S.), American electrical engineer and metallurgist who developed permalloys, metallic alloys with a high magnetic permeability. This property enables the alloy to be easily magnetized and demagnetized, and such alloys are important for use in electrical equipment.

Elmen immigrated to the United States in 1893 and was naturalized in 1918. He worked as an electrical engineer with General Electric (1904–06) and Western Electric (1906–25) corporations and with Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. (1925–41). Elmen founded and directed (1941–56) the magnetism laboratory of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, Washington, D.C. About 1920 the importance of his newly discovered permalloys (iron-nickel and iron-cobalt alloys) for telephone and other communications systems was recognized. His discovery made possible deep-sea telegraph cables of large message-carrying capacity.