Chapter 6: The Flowering of Metallurgy: 1951-1962 

General 

During the early postwar years, extensive educational and administrative changes-had taken place at MIT. The Department of Metallurgy had accommodated a greatly enlarged student body and had revised its educational objectives. The Department's scientific and technical programs had grown in range and depth compared to the prewar years. Promotions and appointments were being made and a new Department head was introducing new policies and a new style. 

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There were also significant changes affecting specific subjects. As an outstanding example, the dropping of qualitative and quantitative analysis signalled some reorientation from chemistry to physics. 

Metals Processing 

Wiki MarkupThe Metals Processing Division, established in 1946 under the direction of Professor John Wulff, was making increasingly important contributions to the Department's teaching. An integrated program combining laboratory and analytical approaches to casting, welding, metal working, and powder metallurgy had been developed in a little over five years. "A large volume of graduate and professional research \ [was\] conducted continually in the various metal processing fields, but the main effort \ [was\] directed toward undergraduate teaching" (Taylor, p. 99).  

Students began the study of metal processing with a basic subject, Engineering Metals, around which the more specialized subjects were built. Engineering Metals, which was required in the Mechanical Engineering and Business and Engineering Administration curricula, was taken by 250 to 400 students per year. It consisted of formal lectures and a participation-type laboratory, using for the most part full-scale commercial equipment (Taylor, p. 100). "A more advanced version of this course, Metal Processing, was given for seniors in metallurgy. After completing Engineering Metals or Metal Processing, students could take the specialized subjects Foundry Engineering, Welding Engineering, Powder Metallurgy or Plastic Working of Metals." These subjects were open to undergraduate and graduate students (Taylor, p. 100). 

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• Physical metallurgy
• Process metallurgy
• Metals processing
• Ceramics 
• Mineral engineering
• High-temperature metals
• Corrosion 

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Graduate students did their experimental research in all of these laboratories. In addition, as stated in the Catalogue, "work on applied thermodynamics and kinetics \ [was\] done in various laboratories of the Department."  

Funding 

Research was funded predominantly by government agencies. A large part of the financial support in this period came from the Atomic Energy Commission, the Office of Naval Research, and also the Air Force. The development of the teaching program in Metals Processing was mainly financed by the Ford Foundation. Some graduate support through fellowships sponsored by industry was becoming available. 

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In 1953 Thomas B. King began as Assistant Professor a notable career of over 30 years, ten of which as head of the Department. John F. Elliott (SeD., 1949) left the steel industry to return to the Department as Associate Professor in 1955. unmigrated-wiki-markup

Cyril Stanley Smith (SeD., 1926), after a distinguished career as associate division leader in charge of metallurgy at the Los Alamos laboratory during World War II and as director of the Institute for the Study of Metals at the University of Chicago, carne to MIT in 1961. He "was eventually to weave the history of metallurgy and archaeological studies into \ [the Department's\] fabric" (Floe, King and Owen). These studies were continued by Professor Heather Lechtman, who was first appointed in 1972.  

Professors King, Elliott and Smith were metallurgists--an indication that metallurgy was still dominant in the Department, Wagner, although a physical chemist, seemed to enjoy being identified with metallurgy and particularly with the Department's emphasis on metallurgical thermodynamics. 

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