Chapter 3 : Extending the Scientific Base: 1917-1938
The new site in Cambridge was more than a symbol of what President Maclaurin referred to as the "New Technology." It afforded adequate-facilities for the first time and also had the potential for future expansion. Another undertaking, however, came to an unexpected end when the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in a decision on November 27,1917 declared that the cooperative arrangement between MIT and Harvard violated a trust which Harvard had previously accepted. This decision made it necessary to terminate the alliance and to abandon the plans for the infant joint School of Advanced Engineering.
General Background
Metallurgy, which traditionally had focused on industrial practice, was moving in the direction of becoming an engineering discipline based on scientific principles, Richards's texts on ore dressing and Hofman's texts on nonferrous metals and general metallurgy exemplified this trend in the area of metals production. The investigation of phase diagrams provided the basis for the solution of many typical metallurgical problems. Research on metallography and heat treating problems advanced physical metallurgy. Texts such as Rosenhain's "Introduction to the Study of Physical Metallurgy" (1914) and Jeffries and Archer's "Science of Metals" (1924) helped to establish the new subdiscipline. Fundamental scientific discoveries such as X-ray diffraction (von Laue, 1912) had contributed revolutionary experimental techniques and results.
At the same time, industrial practice progressed owing to various major developments: the adoption of the flotation process in ore dressing. the discovery of age hardening in aluminum alloys, and great advances in ferrous metallurgy, especially in heat treating and the use of alloy steels. Also, the first signs appeared that metals and materials generally were becoming recognized as major elements in engineering design and performance.
Organizational Developments
President Maclaurin died unexpectedly in 1920 and was succeeded by Elihu Thompson and Ernest F. Nichols, each of whom was in office for only one year. Samuel W. Stratton, after a teaching career in physics and 21 years as the first director of the National Bureau of Standards, became MIT's ninth president in 1922. As shown later in this chapter, his commitment to applied science proved to be instrumental in establishing the Department's role with respect to metallography.
Karl T. Compton came to MIT as president in 1930 from the Physics Department at Princeton. During his first years in office he had to face financial problems at the Institute caused by the Depression. One of his early accomplishments was the restructuring of the Institute's administrative organization. The departments were grouped into three Schools and two auxiliary divisions with a single faculty. Compton's most important achievement in the 1930s was the building up of the science departments and the encouraging of research throughout the Institute. In his correspondence and other statements, he showed awareness of the increasingly scientific nature of metallurgy and the growing importance of materials, as will be shown by several quotations in Chapter 4.
The Department of Mining Engineering and Metallurgy
As mentioned above, Richards retired in 1914 and Hofman was in charge of the Department from 1915 to 1920. At his request, his responsibility was reduced to the Metallurgy option from 1920 to 1922, the year of his retirement.
Geology had been made a separate department in 1892. It is interesting to note the following statement in the report of the Visiting Committee to the Departments of Mining and Geology for 1912-13: "a consolidation of the two departments should be made by transferring the geological organization to the Department of Mining and Metallurgy. We think that this would be in the interests of efficiency and economy." Beginning with the academic year 1920-21, a combined Department of Mining, Metallurgy and Geology was established with Professor Waldemar Lindgren as head.
Lindgren wrote to the Administrative Committee on February 2, 1922: "I shall take the liberty to again express my conviction to you that the Geological Department should in future be separated from Mining and Metallurgy as it has been in the past before the amalgamation took place. The geological section really only has a partial connection with the section of Mining and little connection with that of Metallurgy." Geology was again made a separate department in 1926-27. (For details 01 the relations between the departments, see Shrock.)
In 1933-34, the Department of Mining and Metallurgy began to administer the course in Electrochemical Engineering. The establishment of separate Departments of Mining Engineering and of Metallurgy, which was decided upon in 1936-37, will be described in Chapter 4.
Faculty
With Professor Richards's retirement in 1914, Professor Hofman had become the senior member of the Department of Mining Engineering and Metallurgy. Locke succeeded Richards in the field of ore dressing. After Hofman's retirement, Hayward succeeded him in nonferrous production metallurgy.
Because of the increasing importance of physics for metallurgy, John T. Norton was brought into the Department in 1928 and Francis Bitter in 1934. When Ceramics was added to the Department's domain in 1933, Frederick H. Norton joined its faculty.
Metallography at MIT
Teaching and research in metallography had been conducted in three departments. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Sauveur lectured on this subject in the Department of Mining Engineering and Metallurgy in 1898-1900 and 1904-1906 and Hayward from 1908 into the 19205. In addition, Sauveur was listed as offering a metallography subject during the years of the joint School of Advanced Engineering.
A subject in metallography had also been developed. in the Department of Chemistry by Professors Fay and Williams. Henry Fay, in addition to being Professor of Analytical Chemistry, had done pioneering research in metallography. In 1898 he had published a ground-breaking investigation, "The Segregation of Carbon in a Piece of Boiler Plate." In World War I he was a consultant on metallurgy for Winchester Repeating Arms Company, a precedent for many similar arrangements during World War II. Robert S. Williams joined Fay in metallography as a member of the Department of Chemistry, having returned to MIT in 1907 after receiving a Doctor's degree under Tammann in G6ttingen. Lastly, in the Department of MechanicaLEngineering, Dr. Igor N. Zavarine and J. Weston Pratt conducted a heat treatment laboratory, which included some instruction in metallography.
Hayward wrote in his "Reminiscences" (p. 10):
.. All these laboratories were requiring new and expensive equipment and finally President Maclaurin decided to settle the matter by combining the three .... Professor Sauveur's departure for Harvard left Professor Fay as the senior professor teaching Metallography and Dr. Maclaurin decreed that he was to be in charge. He also decided that the new laboratory was to be set up ... in the Mechanical Department.
I immediately called on Dr. Maclaurin and protested that metallography should be kept in the Metallurgy Department, that the interest of chemists and mechanical engineers was understandable but that fundamentally it was a branch of metallurgy. I pressed my point rather hard but in the end he weakened only a little. He reiterated his decision that there must be orily one laboratory which must be in the space designated in the Mechanical Department. ... He said that Dr. Fay was to be in charge of the course but that details of instruction could be worked out by a conference among those who were specifically involved.
Such a conference never took place ... and the three courses continued much as before except that they used a common laboratory in charge oIVO. Homerberg. who then had the title of Instructor in Chemistry.
The combined laboratory worked out very satisfactorily and made it possible to secure some of the latest equipment ....
The inauguration of Dr. Stratton as president brought an important change in the status of Metallography. He expressed great astonishment at its mixed status and stated positively that it was metallurgy and must be regarded as such. He was quite familiar with the fact that metallography and heat treatment were rapidly developing into a new and erilarged field called Physical Metallurgy and one of his first important acts was to give this new development a proper status at MIT.
Homerberg was a graduate of Course X Chemical Engineering. He became a graduate student in Metallurgy and received a doctorate in 1927, which was followed by his appointment as an Assistant Professor. Professor Williams transferred from the Department of Chemistry to the Department of Mining and Metallurgy in 1927. Dr. Zavarine and Mr. Pratt were moved with the heat treatment laboratory from the Department of Mechanical Engineering to the Department of Mining and Metallurgy.
The Undergraduate Curriculum
A new curriculum was adopted in April 1915. It offered three options: a general option in Mining and Metallurgy; a Metallurgy option which had been entirely revised and in which metallurgical and metallographic studies had been strengthened; and a Mining and Geological option.
The introduction of the new curriculum was upset by the effects of World War I. The report of the Department for 1918-19 comments on the interference by the Student Army Training Corps program with the academic program end mentions an emergency curriculum which was in effect for several years.
In response to the new status of physical metallurgy, an option in this subdiscipline was established in 1927-28. This option substituted applied optics, industrial radiology, optical identification of crystalline compounds, and physical crystallography for engineering courses taken by production metallurgists. In commenting on the new option, the President's Report mentioned the "growing importance of. .. preparing metals for specific and new uses, for creating hitherto unknown properties or the enhancement of physical properties by alloying and [heat] treating" (President's Report for 1927-28, p. 19). With the introduction of the new option, the undergraduate options were Mining Engineering, Petroleum Production, Metallurgy and Physical Metallurgy.
In 1931-32, three new subjects were introduced as electives open to graduate and undergraduate students. One subject was aluminum and magnesium alloys. The President's Report for that year called attention to the growing importance of light metals for the aircraft industry. A second new subject was welding metallurgy. The Report mentioned the role of welding in manufacturing and added: "It is believed that the Institute is the first educational institution in the country which offers instruction in this subject." The third subject was corrosion and heat-resistant alloys, which, in retrospect, was a particularly appropriate choice, in view of their emerging role within a relatively few years.
The choice between emphasis on nonferrous and on ferrous metallurgy that had been made available in 1922 was eliminated in 1937. Similarly, the option of Physical Metallurgy was dropped when a unified course in Metallurgy was reintroduced in the Fall term of 1938.
Graduate Studies
MIT granted its first Master's degree in 1886 in Chemistry. By the 1890s, the number of Master's degrees had greatly increased (Prescott, p. 297). After the turn of the century, the number of Doctor's degrees increased rapidly. Graduate studies had been encouraged by President Crafts, a distinguished organic chemist, and Professor Noyes, the first Director of the Research Laboratory in Physical Chemistry.
The Department of Mining Engineering, later the Department of Mining Engineering and Metallurgy, offered graduate courses relatively early, but graduate degrees in this field had a slow start (Prescott, p. 297). The first Master's degree in Metallurgy was awarded in 1923, as was the first Doctor's degree (MIT Alumni Register, p. xv).
By 1934-35, Master's and Doctor's degrees could be earned in four areas of the Department, of which metallurgy was one. A degree program in ceramics was also available (President's Reports for 1923-24, 1925-26, 1932-33).
It should be mentioned that, in addition to research by graduate students under faculty supervision, a limited amount of research was carried out independently by the academic staff.
Enrollment
The total enrollment of the Department showed a downward trend in the 1920s, but the number of students studying metallurgy increased. This was especially true for graduate students in physical metallurgy (President's Report for 1930-31, p. 123). Ferrous metallurgy was particularly popular (President's Report for 1928-29). There were at least 10 graduate students in metallurgy in 1924-25, seven of whom were candidates for the Doctor's degree.