Ken Russell received the degrees of Met.E. and Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and the Carnegie Institute of Technology, respectively. Immediately following receipt of his doctoral degree in 1964, Prof. Russell joined MIT’s Department of Metallurgy with joint appointments as Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Engineering and Assistant Professor. The Ford Foundation Program had been established to permit departments in the Institute’s School of Engineering to support promising new Ph.D.’s, interested in academic careers, to hone their teaching skills in preparation for placement in academic departments throughout the country. Fortunately for DMSE, Prof, Russell was one of the small number of Ford Fellows who were never exported.
His research interests encompass alloy stability, nucleation and precipitation, porosity, and coarsening kinetics. He has published extensively in these areas. One noteworthy contribution that comes to mind is his extensive monograph (over 200 pages) entitled “Phase Stability under Irradiation” that appeared in Progress in Materials Science in 1985. The kinetic processes of interest to Prof. Russell underlie the radiation effects experienced by materials that serve as structural materials in reactors and such applications occupied much of the latter portion of his career. He eventually held a joint appointment with DMSE and the Department of Nuclear Engineering, teaching the joint subjects Radiation Effects in Reactor Structural Materials (3.75J/22.75J) and Physical Metallurgy Principles for Engineers (3.71J/22.71J). The latter subject served as a graduate-level subject taken by students entering DMSE without background in metallurgy. Others of his academic involvements include Kinetic Processes in Materials (3.21), Phase Transformations and Structure (3.02), and occasional stints in 3.091. Prof. Russell grew up in proximity to farms and the soil and peppered his lectures with earthy anecdotes and metaphors unique to our nation’s heartland.
Ken Russell has provided a major legacy to the content and structure of the academic programs of DMSE. He played a helpful role in the inauguration of the new M.Eng. Program in DMSE. He has long served as member (and often chair) of the Department Committee of Graduate Students and the Graduate Admissions Committee. For several decades graduate students have passed through Ken Russell’s hands as part of the admissions or qualifying processes with many of them perhaps unaware of the fact. Current procedures for attracting applications from potential graduate students of the highest quality and subsequent monitoring and analysis of the rate of acceptance of offers of admission bear the imprint of his guidance.
He held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oslo, received the Sauveur Memorial Award, is a Fellow of ASM, and was a National President, Alpha Sigma Mu Materials Honorary Society.