An Introduction to Physical Metallurgy.

Frontispiece as Henry Clifton Sorby, F.R.S. "...to hime is due the pioneer's honor." "This book---a brief exposition of fundamental physical metallurgical principles---is an outgrowth of a course of lectures which I have given at Harvard University for some years past. The students electing the course have been, for the most part, postgraduate engineers, metallurgists and mechanical engineers predominating---students in the Graduate School of Engineering. Recently, the course has been opened to certain qualified undergratuates in Harvard College, and the group electing it has proved to be still more diverse in interests. Experience of some years with this rather heterogeneous group indicated that there was to introductory text in physical metallurgy which was at once sufficiently specific and fundamental for those who were to continue in the science, yet interesting and comprehensive enough for those seeking a general knowledge of the subject and whose active acquaintance with it would likely end with the course. This book was written to fill that need. Physical metallurgy has developed, in recent years, into a somewhat comprehenive science. Long after Sorby's time, metallography---as the science was then called---continued to have its major interest in metallic microscopy and in the correlating of microstructure with mechanical properties, particularly of the industrial alloys. This notion of what the peculiar field of the science was, however, no longer holds, for any phase of metallic structure or behavior is now considered---and quite rightly---the proper concern of the physical metallurgist. Such diverse problems as those connected with the physics of metal crystals---their fine structure, their behavior under stress and temperature, etc.; the electrochemical problem of corrosion; the physical chemical problem of nonequilibrium in alloy systems; and many others that one might name are now....." [from preface by L. R. Van Wert, Cambridge, Mass., January, 1936]