Paul Steinhardt, Physics, identifies and patents ‘quasicrystals’
paper: “Quasicrystals: A New Class of Ordered Structures“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Steinhardt#/media/File:Icosahedrite_Diffraction_Pattern.jpg
Archives
‘Giant’ Discovery
Eli Burstein, Physics, Discovery of ‘Giant’ Raman Scattering at Surfaces
Liebermann and Graham
Howard Liebermann and Charles Graham, MSE, developed a new method of manufacturing thin ribbons of amorphous metal on a supercooled fast-spinning wheel.[4] This was an alloy of iron, nickel, phosphorus and boron. The material, known as Metglas, was commercialized in the early 1980s and is used for low-loss power distribution transformers (Amorphous metal transformer). Metglas-2605 is composed of 80% iron and 20% boron, has Curie temperature of 373 °C and a room temperature saturation magnetization of 1.56 teslas.[5]
MSE
The Department of Metallurgy became Materials Science and Engineering.
National Science Foundation
Funding of Materials Research Labs (MRL) taken over by the National Science Foundation
Bob Schrieffer, Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1972 was awarded jointly to John Bardeen, Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer “for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity“.
Seminal Work on Conducting Polymers
1970s
Seminal work by Alan Heeger, Physics, and Alan MacDiarmid, Chemistry, on conducting polymers: polyacetylene, polyaniline, etc..
DARPA (DoD)
Call for proposals for Materials Research Laboratories.
Profs. Burstein, Physics, Maddin, Metallurgy, Hughes, Chemistry, Hixson, Engineering, chair, win grant; one of only 3 awarded (others to Cornell and Northwestern) and the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter, LRSM, for interdisciplinary materials research was established.
Sputnik launched
USSR launches Sputnik, first vehicle in space. USA lags in Space research requiring advances in materials.