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Metallurgy and Materials Science History - 1920 to 1970by Rutherford Aris and L. E. Scriven Minnesota’s Iron Ranges were the nation’s main ore sources from the 1880’s until the mid-1900’s. The School of Mines and Metallurgy opened in 1892 and within a couple of decades had achieved prominence. By 1927 B.S. degrees were offered in Mining Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, Geological Engineering and Petroleum Engineering (though no petroleum was ever produced within five hundred miles of Minnesota). Before that, physical metallurgy, an antecedent of materials science, had emerged under the name of metallography as an important subdiscipline distinct from extractive or process metallurgy. The first course in metallography were taught in 1913-1919 by Samuel Hoyt, a 1909 graduate in mining who had just earned a doctorate from Columbia University. In 1919 he went to General Electric. He was succeeded by Oscar Harder, a versatile scientist with degrees in applied chemistry, organic chemistry, and geology and experience at A.S.T.M., Mellon Institute, and Fairbanks Company. In 1927 the Division of Metallography consisted of Harder, Ralph Dowdell, an alumnus who gained Bureau of Mines experience before earning a 1926 Ph.D. at Minnesota; and Henry Jerabek, a 1927 Minnesota Ph.D. Harder soon left. Dowdell served as Head of the Metallography Division and then the Metallurgy Department from 1930 to 1955, when he retired in ill health. In 1955, Richard Swalin, a graduate of the department who had earned his Ph.D. in both Metallurgical and Electrical Engineering at Minnesota, was recruited as an assistant professor from General Electric’s R&D Laboratory, and Morris Nicholson, an M.I.T. D.Sc., was brought in from University of Chicago’s Institute of Metals as professor. Within a year the Dean, Athelstan Spilhaus, had split Metallurgy from the School of Mines, temporarily added it to Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in the old School of Chemistry shell, and appointed Nicholson to Head of the Department. The faculty consisted of Nicholson, Jerabek, Swalin, Thomas Johnston, and Jack Sivertsen, recruited in 1958 with a Ph.D. in physical metallurgy (minor in physics) to strengthen the materials science trend. In 1958, the Department of Metallurgy along with the Departments of Mineral and Metallurgical Engineering moved into the new building which had been built onto the west end of Chemical Engineering. There were new laboratories, heat treating facilities, microscope rooms, darkroom facilities for processing photographic and x-ray images of metals and other materials. An electron microscope was soon added. In 1962 Swalin became Acting Department Head and in 1963 Head of the newly constituted School of Mineral and Metallurgical Engineering. To the Metallurgy faculty were added Y.P. Gupta (metallurgy Ph.D. from M.I.T.) in 1963, Louis Toth (metallurgy Ph.D. from Berkeley) in 1964, and two associate professors in 1968. One was Dale Stein, an alumnus drawn back from General Electric (and later President of Michigan Technological University), who brought expertise in fracture and a strong industrial and engineering orientation. The other was Thomas Hutchinson, a physics Ph.D. from University of Virginia with 3M experience. In a joint effort with other departments soon after, Hutchinson took the lead and established an electron microscopy facility in the new, well-appointed Space Science Center on the campus. Among those he subsequently helped to try electron microscopy were chemical engineering researchers. In 1970, the overall structure and function of the School of Mineral and Metallurgical Engineering was reexamined by Dean Warren Cheston because of its diminishing size (which reflected the wane of mining in the state) and the diversity of interests it housed. The upshot was the decision to disband the School and join Metallurgy to Chemical Engineering, Mineral and Metallurgical Engineering to Civil and Environmental Engineering. |
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