PRECURSORS OF MATERIALS SCIENCE

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. 

As we saw in Chapter 3, the founding text of modern materials science was Frederick Seitz s The Modern Theory of Solids (1940) an updated version of this, also very influential in its day, was Charles Wert and Robb Thomson s Physies of Solids (1964). Alan Cottrell s Theoretical Structural Metallurgy appeared in 1948 (see Chapter 5) although devoted to metals, this book was in many ways a true precursor of materials science texts. Richard Weiss brought out Solid State Physics for Metallurgists in 1963. Several books such as Properties of Matter (1970), by Mendoza and Flowers, were on the borders of physics and materials science. Another key precursor book, still cited today, was Darken and Gurry s book. Physical Chemistry of Metals (1953), followed by Swalin s Thermodynamics of Solids. 

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