Sir Alan Cottrell Receives Von Hippel Award
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Sir Alan Cottrell Receives Von Hippel Award The Materials Research Society's highest honor, the Von Hippel Award, this year will be given to Sir Alan Cottrell, honorable distinguished research fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, Cambridge University. He was cited for "converting crystal dislocations from a handwaving hypothesis to a rigorous discipline, transforming the understanding of brittle fracture, making varied and crucial advances in the theory of radiation damage, and for transforming the teaching of materials science throughout the academic world through his pioneering textbooks." The Von Hippel Award is given annually to an individual in recognition of outstanding contributions to interdisciplinary research on materials. Sir Alan's earliest research was in solidly practical metallurgy related to welding, work hardening, and precipitation hardening, areas where he always displayed a fine understanding of the fundamentals of physics and chemistry. When both the importance and detailed properties of dislocations began to be appreciated just after World War II, he was among the first to relate theoretical concepts to real problems. One of his many important contributions was to demonstrate that the existence of an upper yield point in steel is linked to the trapping of dislocations by mobile interstitial carbon atoms—an elegant example of his ability to relate old problems to new ideas with precision and clarity. Later he turned his talents to a combination of practical and experimental problems associated with materials that have been subjected to heavy neutron irradiation, such as in a nuclear reactor. Earlier this year he was presented with an honorary degree by Cambridge University, "There are two particular reasons why we should all be grateful to him. The first concerns the installation of uranium rods in a reactor: he perceived that when they were lowered into their containers and subjected to irradiation, they would not keep shape but would grow in length and begin to bend; he inspired the design of a frame which saved the situation. Second, he made inquiries about the safety of the containers in the reactor; they told him that the walls were sound, and he asked if they had proved it: hence the cunning use of ultrasound to search for cracks within the walls themselves. Thus he has earned the thanks not only of scientists and the nuclear industry, but also
of the whole country." His expertise on the fracture mechanics of reactor pressure vessels, linked to his knowledge of radiation embrittlement, has been valuable to designers of nuclear reactors for many years. In an era when the mechanical properties of steel belonged to mechanical engineers, particularly fracture potential and shaping for manufacture, radiation damage was studied by physicists. Sir Alan's pioneering work in the 1950s and 1960s on the theory of yield point, strain-aging, and brittle fracture led to an enduring link in the way engineers and metallurgists study and control these forms of behavior. His elega
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