From an Ad Hoe Federation to an Institution
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As the Presidents See It...
From an Ad /toe Federation to an Institution R.J.H. Voorhoeve, 1979 MRS President Prior to 1978 and 1979, the years I was involved with the Materials Research Society as program chairman and president, respectively, the Society had passed and survived its wee hours, but its success was by no means secured. Its survival depended on the generosity and vision of a relatively small number of people—Rustum Roy, Harry Gatos, and Ken Jackson—yet their efforts alone were not sufficient to assure viability. This narrow circle needed to be expanded. I remember vividly a 1976 meeting in which Ken Jackson pleaded with a number of his colleagues to lend a hand. Response was muted; existing professional societies already had the allegiance of many of us, life was busy, and the translation of "materials science" into a "materials science society" had not yet become an intuitive imperative. After a few days, nevertheless, I decided to join the effort, more because of Ken's frustration than because of any great conviction of my own. In the late 1970s, materials science research was already firmly established as an essentially multidisciplinary endeavor in electronic materials. Chemists, physicists, spectroscopists, and metallurgists in establishments like Bell Laboratories, GE Laboratories, and IBM Laboratories worked together on a day-today basis to elucidate the complex structure-property-history relationships and to relate these phenomena to the basic atomic structures and electronic processes. A similar development is now under way in optical materials, magnetic materials, and materials used as catalysts, as well as for nuclear waste storage, ceramics, and cements. Oddly, more often than not, the people who worked on these multidisciplinary subjects would report their work at meetings composed solely of chemists, or solely of physicists, etc. It became the vision of the Materials Research Society to organize multidisciplinary symposia focused on the themes that were the object of the day-to-day multidisciplinary research in the major
laboratories. In so doing, MRS became a home for people who identified as strongly, or more strongly, with their field of R&D than with their original university discipline. In crystallizing this vision, we—as Society leadership at that time— often had to discourage the inclusion of symposia which were not multidisciplinary. We did not want to adulterate MRS with symposia which could just as well have been hosted by the "traditional" societies. I remember some vivid arguments along those lines, and I was always happy to see the multidisciplinary mission point of view prevail. I believe that this clarity of purpose was a key to the success of MRS.
We did not want to adulterate MRS with symposia which could just as well have been hosted by the "traditional" societies. Many of the early practices and characteristics of MRS have become more prominent over the years, and no doubt many people have claimed or received credit for them. Few of these practices, however, were in
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