Charles Saint Lambert

Charles Saint Lambert (identified in Spanish-language sources as Carlos Santiago Lambert: 31 December 1793 – 4 August 1876) was a Franco-Chilean mining engineer and businessman. He explored the mineral deposits in northern Chile and introduced the reverberatory furnace which transformed the Chilean copper mining industry by making it practical to exploit previously discarded aggregations of relatively low-grade copper slag. Copper production increased six-fold in just thirty years. Fundición Lambert, a copper smelter in La Serena built by Charles around 1840, was arguably the first expression of the Industrial Revolution in Chile.

Lambert was also the man who talent spotted and recruited the remarkable Polish-born scholar-mineralogist Ignacy Domeyko to take a post as Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy at the Liceo Gregorio Cordovez (college) at La Serena (Coquimbo). Domeyko, who was living as a political exile in Alsace when Lambert communicated the job offer on behalf of the Chilean government, subsequently made a substantial contribution to science, scholarship and, more indirectly, social welfare in the nascent Chilean state.