Between Making And Knowing: Tools In The History Of Materials Research

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.

Readership: Researchers and graduate students in materials science and related fields.

Joseph D Martin is an assistant professor in the Department of History, Durham University, and the co-editor-in-chief of Physics in Perspective. His research focuses on the history of solid state and condensed matter physics and materials science in the twentieth century. He is the author of Solid State Insurrection: How the Science of Substance Made American Physics Matter (Pittsburgh, 2018).

Cyrus C M Mody is an historian of recent science and technology at Maastricht University, focusing on the applied physical sciences in the United States since 1965. He studies the commercialization of academic research, countercultural science and technology, and the longue durée of responsible research and innovation. His books include Instrumental Community: Probe Microscopy and the Path to Nanotechnology (MIT, 2011) and The Long Arm of Moore's Law: Microelectronics and American Science (MIT, 2016).