The variation in Landau free energy while melting platinum was investi
gated at a number of temperatures using computer simulation with a mod
el potential. The technique used was to apply a biasing potential in a
Monte Carlo simulation with umbrella sampling. From the Landau free e
nergy curves one can determine the difference in free energies between
the solid and liquid phases easily and accurately, the thermodynamic
melting point (T(m)), and the limit of metastability of the crystallin
e phase. The latter occurs at approximately 1.2T(m). It was difficult
to freeze the material, but, using a suitable order parameter, this wa
s achieved. Unlike earlier results on a soft sphere system, there was
no evidence for nucleation of a metastable body-centred-cubic phase. O
ne possible reason is the existence of local icosahedral order in the
liquid phase of the metal. The surface free energy of the solid-liquid
surface was estimated from the free energy barrier to melting. Model
rhodium behaved in a very similar way.