History of materials science
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The History of materials science is rooted in the history of the Earth and the culture of the peoples of the Earth.
Wood, bone, stone, and earth are some of the materials which were studie structures of the Roman empire, for example, were made possible by the character of the land; a volcanic peninsula, with stone aggregates and conglomerates containing crystalline material, is, by its nature, going to produce material which weathers differently from soft, sedimentary rock and silt.
That is one of the reasons that the concrete Pantheon of Rome could last for 1850 years, and that the thatched farmhouses of Holland sketched by Rembrandt have long since decayed.
After the thighbone daggers of the early hunter-gatherers were superseded by wood and stone axes, and then by copper, bronze and iron implements of the Roman civilization, more precious materials could then be sought, and gathered together. Thus the medieval goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini could seek and defend the gold which he had to turn into objects of desire for dukes and popes. His autobiography contains one of the first descriptions of a metallurgical process.
Galileo's Two New Sciences (strength of materials and kinematics) includes the first quantitative statements in the science.
[edit] Modern Materials Science
In the early part of the 20th century, most engineering schools had a department of metallurgy and perhaps of ceramics as well. Much effort was expended on consideration of the austenite-martensite-cementite phases found in the iron-carbon phase diagram that underlies steel production. The fundamental understanding of other materials was not sufficiently advanced for them to be considered as academic subjects. In the post-WWII era, the systematic study of polymers advanced particularly rapidly. Rather than create new polymer science departments in engineering schools, administrators and scientists began to conceive of materials science as a new interdisciplinary field in its own right, one that considered all substances of engineering importance from a unified point of view. Northwestern University instituted the first materials science department in 1955.
The Materials Research Society (MRS) has been instrumental in creating an identity and cohesion for this young field. MRS was the brainchild of researchers at Penn State University and grew out of discussions initiated by Prof. Rustum Roy in 1970. The first meeting of MRS was held in 1973. As of 2006, MRS has grown into an international society that sponsors a large number of annual meetings and has over 13,000 members. MRS sponsors meetings that are subdivided into symposia on a large variety of topics as opposed to the more focused meetings typically sponsored by organizations like the American Physical Society or the IEEE. The fundamentally interdisciplinary nature of MRS meetings has had a strong influence on the direction of science, particularly in the popularity of the study of soft materials, which are in the nexus of biology, chemistry, physics and mechanical and electrical engineering.
[edit] References
- Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571) Autobiography.
- Galileo, 1638 Two New Sciences. Leiden: Louis Elsevier.
- 20th anniversary issue of MRS Bulletin from 1973.
- Northwestern University press release about 50th anniversary of its Materials Science Department in 2005.
- Solid State Science: Past, Present and Predicted, edited by D.L. Weaire and C.G. Windsor, ISBN 0-85274-584-2.
[edit] Materials scientists
- Robert W. Cahn
- Pol Duwez
- Sir Charles Frank
- Arthur R. von Hippel
- Peter Hirsch
- William Hume-Rothery
- Egon Orowan
- Henry Clifton Sorby
- Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
- Vito Volterra
- Clarence Zener
