Between Science and Industry

The following sections are included:

• About the Contributors
• Introduction: Materials Science Institutions
• Contents

Part I consists of three chapters addressing different facets of the evolution of materials science institutions and the disciplinary formation that made them possible. Until recently, materials such as ceramics, glasses, semiconductors and metals were produced with significant amounts of practitioner know-how, and their production was studied separately with different instruments and theories. Only in the past few decades did those fields draw together into a more or less single and coherent field of science, though with varying scope and given different names, such as solid-state physics, condensed matter physics, and materials science. How and why were institutions implicated in this disciplinary consolidation, and how did it justify, in turn, creating a distinct kind of institution to foster it?…

The relation between the material or physical world and the immaterial one is an old philosophical problem engaging thinkers such as Descartes, who in the 17th century claimed that the essence of matter was its spatial extension. After Newton had formulated his laws of gravitation and motion a few decades later, material ontologies started to gain popularity, the perhaps most common exponent of this shift being the watchmaker analogy for God. Since then, a number of social and cultural processes, mechanization, secularization and industrialization have contributed to a slowly growing obsession with material phenomena. Madonna has become mainstream when she claims “that we are living in a material world…”

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• From Manufacturing Know-How to Diverse Materials-Related Sciences
• The Interdependence between Materials Research and Research Technologies
• Materials Research during World War II and the Cold War
• From Materials Research to Materials Science
• The COSMAT Report from 1974
• References

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• History
• Theory
• Analysis
• Conclusions
• References

The chapters in Part II, “Facilities,” are about the networks of institutions involved in three different kinds of large-scale materials science facilities: reactors in the US and Europe, the ESS spallation source in Sweden, and Brazilian synchrotron sources. These articles show how the processes outlined in the preceding section play out in practice…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• The Development of European Neutron Sources
• European Advantages in Instrumentation
• An Alternative to Reactors: Spallation as a New Technology to Achieve Higher Neutron Flux
• Plans for Spallation Sources in Europe
• The Problem of Neutron Science: “We Need More Neutrons!”
• The European Spallation Source Fills the “Neutron Gap”
• The Third-Generation Neutron Sources
• References

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• European Big Science: An Institutional View
• Institutional Change, Institutional Logics, and Bounded Rationality
• The European Spallation Source: A Long Story
• The Actors and Institutions of (Big) Politics and (Big) Science
• References

This is a brief history of the development of synchrotron radiation sources in Brazil from a personal perspective. I tried to recollect facts showing how, in a time span of about 40 years, X-ray and VUV physics in Brazil took a big leap from small individual laboratory light generators to the successful completion of one of the most brilliant synchrotron light sources in the world. Over the years, many people contributed to this success story. But one person was very special for his leadership, deep multidisciplinary knowledge, infinite creativity and enthusiasm, and immeasurable kindness. This article is dedicated to the memory of Ricardo Rodrigues, who passed away in January 2020, at the age of 68…

The three chapters in Part III, “How Laboratories Evolve: Industrial, National, and Individual” illustrate the nature and evolution of institutions in different domains of materials research, focusing on materials science laboratories in the United States but pointing beyond them…

The American industrial laboratory had its heyday through the middle decades of the 20th century. In this era, corporate interests were committed to the value of research and development for the health of industry, and so were willing to invest, sometimes lavishly, in sites where the promise of scientific inquiry could be converted into profitable, patentable discoveries. These laboratories were some of the key sites in which materials science developed. This chapter reviews the history of some of the most important industrial laboratories that nurtured the growth of materials science research in the United States…

At the beginning of the 21st century, the largest projects in the US national laboratory system were devoted to materials science, signaling when this field, with its focus on practicality and industrial participation, was the top national research priority. By the same token, the fate and fortunes of the laboratory system were closely tied to materials science research, which encompassed widescale investigation into the properties of materials as well as the search for new commercial and medical material applications. However, the national laboratory system did not begin with a close connection to the investigation of materials. In the beginning, it was the World War II projects of radar and the atomic bomb that joined scientists, engineers, and military and industry officials. The success of these projects and wartime contacts led to abundant funding opportunities for a vast postwar research enterprise. Prewar and wartime institutions at Los Alamos, Chicago, and Berkeley were transformed into federally sponsored institutions, and new national laboratories were built…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• What is the History of Materials Science?
• Materials Science: Making and Shaping the ESRF
• Making Materials Science Through Its Instrumental Techniques, ca. 1980–2000
• Materials Science Enters ESRF’s Organizational Stage: ca. 2001–2008
• Beyond Materials Science: ca. 2009–2020
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• References

The four articles in Part IV deal with different aspects of professional life and communication.

As Brit Shields describes in “Government Funding of University Materials Science and Engineering Research Centers,” after 1960, a variety of federal agencies began to sponsor materials science research. One of the most successful in the US is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which The Economist recently called the agency “that shaped the modern world.” In the 1960s, DARPA’s predecessor agency ARPA established materials science research centers at several universities, including Cornell, Northwestern, and the University of Pennsylvania, each of which itself has become an institution in the materials science research network. Shields describes how the US federal government’s funding and organization of materials science and engineering research centers evolved over the second half of the twentieth century in response to changing national needs, economic contexts, and ideologies of how best to organize such centers. The article presents the founding of the Interdisciplinary Laboratories (IDL) program, as funded by ARPA, in the midst of the Cold War with a focus on meeting the demands of the space race and the development of nuclear weapons. Shields also explores later iterations of the materials science and engineering research centers, such as the National Science Foundation’s Materials Research Laboratories (MRL) in the 1970s with their focus on civilian and industrial applications, as well as the NSF’s Materials Research and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) in the 1990s, which fostered cooperation between academia and private industry…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Interdisciplinary Laboratories
• Materials Research Laboratories
• Engineering Research Centers and Materials Research Groups
• Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers
• References

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Materials in Human Experience
• Specialization and Continuity
• Professional Societies, Associations, and Institutes
• The Great Amalgamation: Materials Science & Engineering
• Social Function and the Greater Community
• References

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• What Is Materials Science?
• Types of Materials Science Journals
• The Converts
• The Spawn
• Materials from the Beginning
• Conclusion: Future of Materials Science Journals
• References

It took two years of dedicated planning, visiting different materials research groups all over Brazil and in continuous email discussions, for the Brazilian Materials Research Society (BMRS) (named in Portuguese as SBPMat for Sociedade Brasileira de Pesquisa em Materials) to be founded on June 26 in an assembly meeting in Rio de Janeiro and over the internet…

Part V shows non-Western countries evolving their materials science institutions. In each case, an entire network of institutions — sites, funding agencies, journals, and so forth — was required to make the materials science happen, each needing to be flexibly and efficiently managed…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• The Project of Modernizing Japan
• The Crisis of Materials Shortage
• A Resource-Poor Nation Toward the Total War
• Materials Sciences or Stacking the Sciences for Materials
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• References

In the Foreword of the book The Coming of Materials Science, Robert W. Cahn told a Chinese story: when learning from the Soviet Union in the 1950s, some Chinese universities set up majors in “metal physics,” which was actually a misunderstanding of the word metalovedenie (similar to metallography or physical metallurgy). However, due to the lack of training required by engineers in metal heat treatment, the majors had to stop teaching and only a few of them changed to materials science in the 1980s. It is interesting to review the history of the discipline of materials science and engineering (MSE) in China by tracing the role played by various institutions. Although a single article does not suffice to meet that goal, it is possible to explore some microcosms of China’s scientific development under the multiple transforms between the Western general education model and the Soviet specialized education model…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction: The Materials and Energy Resources of Africa
• The Origins of Materials Research in Africa
• The Modern Development of Materials Research in Africa
• The Origins of the African Materials Research Society (AMRS)
• The Formation of the Africa/African Materials Research Society (AMRS)
• Collaborations of the AMRS with the IUMRS, ASESMA, and JUAMI
• Interactions with the African Union (AU), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
• Materials Research by Africans
• The Emergence of African Centers of Excellence in Materials Research and Education
• The Role of the African Diaspora
• Implications
• Summary and Concluding Remarks
• Acknowledgments
• References

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Jorge Sabato’s Personal Journey to Metallurgy
• Jorge Sabato’s Multifaceted Project for Modern Metallurgy
• Early Academic Initiatives on Metallurgy and Metals Physics
• A National Forum for Local Metallurgists
• Nuclear Metallurgy at the Beginning of the Reactor Program
• The Interaction with the Local Metallurgical Industry
• Other Activities in Metallurgy and Metals Technology
• Concluding Remarks: From Metallurgy to Materials Science
• Suggestions for Future Research
• Acknowledgments
• References

Some institutions engaged in materials science themselves consist of networks of institutions. As Terry Quinn points out in “The Origin and Early Days of Material Research in Metrology Laboratories,” metrology is an example. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures, or BIPM after the French acronym, was established in 1872 and set out to manufacture metric standards. But the standards failed to meet the desired requirements, and the BIPM wound up making several different contributions to materials science: (1) study of materials used in the standards in the days when these were material objects; (2) testing materials and standards; (3) coordination with national metrological institutions and their standards, including the German National Metrology Laboratory (PTB), the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the US National Bureau of Standards (NBS), and later the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and a host of other international agencies. From the first, the BIPM was the center of a global network and institution of institutions…

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• The Meter Convention of 1875 and the Creation of New Metric Standards
• The Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris (CNAM)
• The International Bureau of Weights and Measures, BIPM, 1875–1920 and the Discovery of Invar and Elinvar
• Creation of the three “Grand Laboratoires”: The Physikalisch Technische Reichenstalt (PTR) in Berlin in 1887, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) Teddington UK in 1900 and the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) Washington DC in 1901
• Conclusions
• References

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• HEP and the Development of Scintillating Crystals
• Development of Radiation-Tolerant Silicon Detectors for HEP
• Selection and Surface Treatment of Materials for Use in the Vacuum of Particle Accelerators
• Superconducting Materials for Accelerators and Detectors
• References

“It was as if nanotechnology had gone through a phase transition; what had once been perceived as blue sky research … was now being seen as the key technology of the 21st century.”

On October 24, 2003, California politicians, academics, and civic leaders attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the California NanoSystems Institute in Santa Barbara. This $55 million high-tech building, with its ultra-filtered clean rooms and modular laboratories, represented only a fraction of the burgeoning national investment in nanotechnology. Since 2000, when President William J. Clinton announced a new national initiative to foster the tools of the “next industrial revolution,” dozens of universities and corporations have initiated programs where scientists and engineers research phenomena and technologies at the nanoscale…

The following section is included:

• Index