Preface to the 50th anniversary issue of the Journal of Materials Science

In his book ‘‘The Coming of Materials Science’’ [1], the late Professor Robert Wolfgang Cahn FRS documented the rise of Materials Science as a distinct discipline from its roots in solid-state physics, metallurgy, polymer chemistry, inorganic chemistry, mineralogy, glass, and ceramic technology. The development of the discipline was a process in which he was intimately involved from 1942 when he enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge to read...