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Materials Research Timeline

 

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The history of materials research is full of discoveries and innovations. At first researchers were focused on identifying the properties of materials that were familiar from their everyday lives. Later, research was concentrated on developing new materials with new properties to enhance peoples’ lives. Finally, in today’s age of computers, research is devoted to the control of material properties at the atomic and molecular scale.

 

2007 MRI researchers win R&D 100 Award for a new device to make laser-to-fiber and fiber-to-fiber connections within optical fiber packages.
2000 Vincent H. Crespi is awarded the Faculty Scholar Medal in the area of Physics for his work with nanoscale carbon materials.
1999 Kwadwo Osseo-Asare earns the Faculty Scholar Medal in Engineering for his research in hydrometallurgy.
1994 The new Materials Research Institute Laboratory building is competed and begins operations.
1992 Materials Research Institute, which absorbed the Materials Research Laboratory, was created coordinate the needs of PSU’s diverse materials research community.
1990 PSU Diamond & Related Materials Consortium created a symbiotic relationship with industry. PSU becomes a leader in diamond research. First high-temperature, thin-film diamond transistor fabricated.
1989 Method developed for making fiber-reinforced composites using squeeze casting.
1987 Center for Electronic Materials & Processing (now called Electronic Materials & Processing Research Laboratory) established.
1987 First Schottky diode device fabricated on a semiconductor diamond thin-film.
1986 Center for Advanced Materials founded after a national competition.
1986 Center for Acoustics & Vibration established, 1 of only 3 such centers in the US.
1986 3 MRL scientists listed among Science Digest’s “Top 100 Innovations and the People Behind Them”
1985 The first recipient of the Penn State Heart was sustained for 10 days at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.
1984 Robert E. Newnham is honored with the Faculty Scholar Medal in Physical Science and Engineering for creating new composite materials with a distinctive group of properties.
1976 Harry Allcock develops a family of inorganic polymers called Polyorganophosphazines.
1976 Patent granted to Della M. Roy for work with the conversion of South Sea coral for use of as a synthetic material for human bone implants.
1973 Materials Research Society was founded at PSU.
1972 Phillip Walker’s lab becomes known as the world’s leading academic lab for studies on carbonaceous materials, the “Mecca for carbon science”.
1969 The National Colloquy on the Field of Materials is held at Penn State.
1966 John Aston’s Cryogenic Lab becomes the first to produce temperatures below 0.001 degrees K, reaching one-millionth of a degree above absolute zero.
1964 Spectroscoper David Rank determines that Jupiter is clouded by a sea of hydrogen gas at least 160 miles thick, 10 times thicker than previously thought.
1962 PSU Materials Research Laboratory established.
1959 PSU’s Solid State Technology graduate program (now called Materials Science) was founded.
1958 Intercollege Research Programs established.
1955 First images of individual atoms produced by field-ion-microscope.
1951 Atom probe field-ion-microscope invented by Erwin W. Mueller (physics).
1951 Colored Glasses is published, written by Woldemar Weyl, the still-reprinted critical monograph describing how the composition and processing of glass influences color.
1949 Garfield Thomas Water Tunnel, the largest water tunnel in existence until 1988, was completed.
1945 Eric Walker left Harvard and brought approximately 80 engineers to PSU to continue research on torpedo design and development. The group would become the Applied Research Laboratory.
1943 Russell Marker discovers a method of preparing progesterone inexpensively.
1939 Russell Marker synthesizes a group of steroid hormones called sapogens and discovers the “Marker Degradation”.
1938 Woldemar A Weyl, considered to be 1 of the modern founders of glass science, arrived at PSU.
1934 Fuel Science program established.
1931 Ferdinand Brickweddle helps discover deuterium.
1930 David Rank builds his first spectroscope.
1929 Frank Whitmore and Merrill Fenske create Penn State’s petroleum refining laboratory, and develop high-octane fuels.
1923 Ceramic Science program established.
1921 Wheeler P. Davey publishes “A Precision Determination of the Dimensions of the Unit Crystal of Rock.”
1914 Wheeler P. Davey employs X-ray examination of a steel casting.
1912 von Laue discovers x-ray diffraction.
1909 Leo Baekland develops phenol-formaldehyde compositions, which can be molded into any shape and hardened through molecular cross-linking by heating under pressure.
1908 Engineering Experiment Station established for along scientific and technical lines.
1908 Metallurgy program established.
1907 Department of Engineering Mechanics and Materials of Construction (now called Engineering Science and Mechanics) was established.
1906 The accidental discovery of age hardening in aluminum alloys leads to the zeppelin.
1904 Vanadium steels developed
1901 The Nernst lamp is the first commercial utilization of semiconductors (excluding carbon).
1898 William Frear helps organize the first National Pure Food Congress.
1891 Synthetic abrasives began with silicon carbide as a product of the electric furnace
1889 First nickel steels developed.
1882 Hadfield’s high-manganese steel developed.
1868 Robert Mushet introduces tungsten to tool steel.
1864 Dmitri Mendeleev devises the Periodic Table of Elements, the indispensable reference tool for those in the field.
1863 Henry Clifton Sorby applies the microscope to steel and discovers that the grains which can be seen on a fractured surface are actually crystalline in nature.
1857 Evan Pugh proves plants take nitrogen from soil, not from the air.