Materials science emergence

In this introductory chapter, I shall focus on the institutional beginnings of materials science, and materials engineering as well indeed, MSE became an accepted abbreviation at quite an early stage. Following an examination, in Chapter 2, of the earlier emergence of some related disciplines, the intellectual antecedents to and development of materials science in its early stages are treated in Chapter 3. The field made its first appearance in USA, and for a number of years developed only in that country. Its development elsewhere was delayed by at least a decade. 

David Turnbull, in his illuminating Commentary on the Emergence and Evolution of Materials Science (Turnbull 1983), defined materials science broadly as the characterisation, understanding, and control of the structure of matter at the ultramolecular level and the relating of this structure to properties (mechanical, magnetic, electrical, etc.). That is, it is Ultramolecular Science . In professional and educational practice, however, he says that materials science focuses on the more complex features of behaviour, and especially those aspects controlled by crystal... 

Harwood, J.J. (1970) Emergence of the field and early hopes, in Materials Science and Engineering in the United States, ed. Roy, R. (Pennsylvania State University Press) p. 1. 

This entire book is about the emergence, nature and cultivation of a new discipline, materials science and engineering. To draw together the strings of this story, it helps to be clear about what a scientific discipline actually is that, in turn, becomes clearer if one looks at the emergence of some earlier disciplines which have had more time to reach a condition of maturity. Comparisons can help in definition we can narrow a vague concept by examining what apparently diverse examples have in common. 

This chapter is entitled Precursors of Materials Science and the foregoing major Sections have focused on the atomic hypothesis, crystallography, phase equilibria and microstructure, which I have presented as the main supports that made possible the emergence of modern materials. science. In what follows, some other fields of study that made substantial contributions are more brielly discussed. It should be remembered that this is in no way a le.xihnok, my task is not to explain the detailed nature of various phenomena and entitities, but only to outline how they came to be invented or recognised and how they have contributed to the edifice of modern materials science. The reader may well think that I have paid too much attention, up to now, to metals that was inevitable, but I shall do my best to redress the balance in due course. 

The first detailed book to describe the practice and theory of stereology was assembled by two Americans, DeHoff and Rhines (1968) both these men were famous practitioners in their day. There has been a steady stream of books since then a fine, concise and very clear overview is that by Exner (1996). In the last few years, a specialised form of microstructural analysis, entirely dependent on computerised image analysis, has emerged - fractal analysis, a form of measurement of roughness in two or three dimensions. Most of the voluminous literature of fractals, initiated by a mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot at IBM, is irrelevant to materials science, but there is a sub-parepisteme of fractal analysis which relates the fractal dimension to fracture toughness one example of this has been analysed, together with an explanation of the meaning of fractal dimension , by Cahn (1989). 

One of the defining features of a new discipline is the publication of textbooks setting out its essentials. In Section 2.1.1, devoted to the emergence of physical chemistry, I pointed out that the first textbook of physical chemistry was not published until 1940, more than half a century after the foundation of the field. Materials science has been better served. In what follows, I propose to omit entirely all textbooks devoted to straight physical metallurgy, of which there have been dozens, say little about straight physics texts, and focus on genuine MSE texts. 

So, nearly half a century after the emergence of the concept, we its practitioners have in materials science and engineering a clearly distinct discipline which in practice doubles up as a multidiscipline, with a substantial number of independent academic departments and research institutes spread around the world, with its own multifarious journals and textbooks, and a large number of professionals, also spread around the world, who call themselves materials scientists and engineers and communicate with each other on that basis. We have a profession to be proud of. 

One other set of issues runs through the book like a leitmotif What is a scientific discipline How do di.sciplines emerge and differentiate Can a discipline also be Interdisciplinary Is materials science a real discipline These questions are not just an exercise in lexicography and, looking back, it is perhaps the last of these questions which gave me the impetus to embark on the book. 

Besides the classical search for linear, one-dimensional electronically active materials, synthetic approaches are now also focussed on the generation and characterization of two- and three-dimensional structures, especially shape-persistent molecules with a well-defined size and geometry on a nanometer-scale. It is therefore timely and adequate to extend concepts of materials synthesis and processing to meet the needs defined by nanochcmislry since the latter is now emerging as a subdiscipline of material sciences. 

MATERIALS SCIENCE IS A CRITICAL TECHNOLOGY for America. In 1987 and again in 1990, the U.S. Department of Commerce included advanced materials such as ceramics, polymers, advanced composites, and superconductors in a short list (1) of very important emerging technologies. The world market based on these advanced materials was estimated conservatively at 600 million by the year 2000. 

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