Indexing and Overview

This book is indexed in Chemical Abstracts Service.

Content and Purpose

This book offers a comprehensive sketch of the tools used in material research and the rich and diverse stories of how those tools came to be. We aim to give readers a sense of what tools materials researchers required in the late 20th century, and how those tools were developed and became accessible.

The book is in a sense a collective biography of the components of what the philosopher of science, Ian Hacking, calls the instrumentarium of materials research. Readers should gain an appreciation of the work materials researchers put into developing and using such tools, and of the tremendous variety of such tools.

They should also gain some insight into the material (and hence financial) prerequisites for materials research. Materials research requires funding for the availability and maintenance of its tools; and the category of tools encompasses a broad range of substances, apparatus, institutions, and infrastructure.

Between Nature and Society: Biographies of Materials (Part of A World Scientific Encyclopedia of the Development and History of Materials Science)