Materials Research and Its Toolkit

Materials research has contributed to pervasive, profound, yet largely invisible changes to both society in general and the sciences in particular. From computers to nuclear reactors, many high technologies – including the technologies of theory and experiment – require advanced materials. Yet we have no systematic history of materials research, despite ground-breaking work by scholars such as Klaus Hentschel and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent. There is, however, general agreement that characterization and fabrication tools play an important role in nucleating communities of materials researchers, and that the institutions of materials research (professional societies, journals, funding streams, etc.) orient strongly to innovation in the tools of materials research. But what are the tools of materials research, and how have they co-evolved with materials science and related fields that arose in the postwar era? Over the past two years we have organized a collection of essays on the history of tools in materials research, which this panel samples. We use an expansive definition of “tools,” from the obvious to the less so. Obvious tools include apparatus for making and inspecting new materials under laboratory conditions: advanced furnaces, sputterers, spectrometers, microscopes, etc. Less obvious tools include the infrastructure of experimentation: standards, lab safety practices and regulations, laboratory buildings. We also examine tools that are so ancient and ubiquitous that they are taken for granted by the policymakers and practitioners of materials research alike: glassware, recipes, balances, etc. Taking these categories highlights the mutual evolution of tools, materials, and research communities.