It is evident from the foregoing sections that the field of materials science and engineering is very diverse. Correspondingly, scientists as well as engineers in the field are drawn from many disciplines. As a group, their activities must range over a wide spectrum, including:

Likewise, they are employed in a variety of sectors and institutions—in private industry, colleges and universities, government, and nonprofit institutions.

In this section of Chapter 7, attention is directed to the numbers, character, and origin of the professional manpower in the field, and to the nature of the professional societies and activities associated with it. Such features define what can usefully be considered as the “materials community.”

At the outset it should be recognized that by no means all scientists and engineers working on problems of materials received professional training in materials, i.e. a materials-designated degree. In fact, the statistics show that the majority of professionals working on materials hold degrees in virtually all areas of the physical sciences and engineering, and that materials-designated degree-holders—metallurgists, ceramists, and polymer engineers—represent only a small fraction of the total professional manpower working in the materials field.

MSE is so diverse and so broad that accurate data about personnel in the field is difficult to obtain. The problem is compounded by the facts that the machine-readable National Registers of professional personnel maintained by the National Science Foundation for scientists were compiled only in the four years 1964, 1966, 1968, and 1970, and that only one national survey of engineers (for the year 1969) has ever been made. Moreover, the National Registers were not designed to separate data pertaining to MSE and it has been necessary to develop a method to do so. The first step, the selection of the disciplines of science and fields of specialization of engineering encompassed by MSE was based on the process described in detail in Chapter 2,*whereby categories used in the National Engineers Register and the National Register of Scientific Personnel were identified by the collective judgment of about 150 professionals in industry, education, and government.

With the categories of MSE thus selected, the computer storage data banks of the National Registers were used to obtain statistical information about the manpower in the field. However, it should be noted that the Registers do not include all the professionals in the U.S.—the Engineers Register for 1969 totaled only 308,000 or 30.8%, out of an estimated 1,000,000 engineers working in the U.S., and the Scientific Personnel Register totaled 298,000 or 64.8%, out of an estimated 460,000. (The Register data are restricted to members of the various relevant technical societies.) Accordingly, the statistics obtained from the National Registers and reported here, have been adjusted to given an estimated total number in each category.

The resulting data on the number of professionals working in various categories of engineering and science as embodied in MSE are given in Tables 7.46 and 7.47. ¹⁹ A significant characteristic of the engineering data is that it would seem that more engineers are working on materials in the category called structural than in any other. (The category “structural” includes engineers concerned with structures, concrete technology, and rock mechanics.) It is also noteworthy that the “electromagnetic” category also has a large number of engineers working on materials—about as many as metallurgical. The data in Table 7.47 show that the number of scientists working in the field of metallurgy is only 2.7% of the total scientists in materials. This percentage seems abnormally low because metallurgy tends to be thought of as a science rather than an engineering discipline. However, this low percentage may be attributed to the fact that Tables 7.46 and 7.47 are based on the data from the National Registers of Engineers and Scientists, which in turn are based on society membership. Most metallurgists during their professional career join the American Society for Metals or The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, and data on the membership of these societies are reported through the National Register for Engineers. Therefore, most of the metallurgists are shown in Table 7.46 as materials engineers rather than in Table 7.47. Among the scientific disciplines embodying materials, that of organic chemistry is by far the largest, accounting for 31.6% of the total. In fact, the various disciplines of chemistry as a group dominate the scientists working in materials—76.6% of such scientists are in chemistry.

All told in the years 1968–69, there were about 360,000 scientists and engineers working on materials in the U.S. These professionals in the field of MSE provided the technical base for an estimated employment of at least sixteen million people, both blue collar and white collar engaged in the production of materials, i.e., in the selected categories of the “durable and

and nondurable” goods sectors of U.S. manufacturing industry as shown in Table 7.48. ²⁰

The characteristic profile of professional manpower in MSE can be derived from the data in the National Registers. Taking first the scientists and engineers in the field who appear in the National Engineers Register, the situation in 1969 is shown in Table 7.49. Even more extensive information about such materials professionals could have been extracted from 1969 National Engineers Register, but the information in the table suffices to illustrate the diversity of the field. Unfortunately, it was not possible to obtain trends over time, and hence extrapolate into the future, because the Engineers Register was made only once in detailed and analyzable form. For such reasons, it would be worthwhile to have a National Register of Engineers made at least every five years and preferably every two years.

Turning to the materials professionals appearing in the National Science Registers, which were made every two years from 1964 to 1970, a corresponding profile can be drawn and some trends discerned. Tables 7.50, 7.51, and 7.52 indicate that for the scientists working in the field of materials, there was over the period 1964–1970:

The last of these points may be attributed to the drop in the last few years of students electing chemistry as a major and to the aging of the total population of chemists. Such aging is evident from the constancy in the last four Registers of the total number of chemists in materials, coupled with the fewer chemists entering the field of chemistry. Whether the various trends indicated above persisted during the economic recession in 1970 and 1971 is not known.

A group of scientists and engineers in materials which merits special note is that working in the area of synthetic polymers in materials (macromolecules)—plastics, rubbers, and synthetic fibers. This area is the family of new materials which has grown to major importance in the last two decades. The growth of employment, both blue collar and white collar, in this field of plastics as reported by the Department of Labor under chemicals ²¹

is shown in Figure 7.45. This growth amounted to about 85% for the period 1958–1970, whereas the growth in total employment in the U.S. was about 24% for the same period of time. The professional manpower working in the plastics field includes 19,000 chemists ²² and 16,700 plastic engineers. These data were obtained from the National Register of Scientists for 1970 plus an adjustment for the total number of chemists employed in the U.S., and from the 1971 membership of the Society of Plastics Engineers. A further indication of the rapid growth in the area of macromolecules is apparent from the growth of membership ²³ in the Society of Plastics Engineers for the period 1957–1971, shown in Figure 7.46.

As a final point in this profile of professionals in the field of MSE, it is instructive to examine the mix of disciplinary backgrounds among professionals in relevant industrial laboratories. Eight large laboratories in six industries which are concerned to a major degree with R&D on materials and materials-related problems were surveyed to determine the mix of disciplines employed in their laboratories. Each laboratory listed its researchers by discipline and by age group. The results, given in percentages, are shown by industry in Table 7.53. From these limited data, it can be tentatively concluded that:

Turning now to the question of the flow of manpower from the universities into the professional materials community discussed above, we shall first examine the statistics on materials-designated degrees at the baccalaureate and graduate level. Holders of such degrees—which include metallurgy, ceramics, polymer science, or materials science and engineering

in the degree title—constitute only a fraction, as was discussed above, of the professionals actively working on materials in industry, government, and the universities. Nevertheless, the quantities and time-trends of such degrees are important for understanding the characteristics of the field of MSE.

The collection of U.S. statistics on materials-designated degrees appears to have begun in the 1940’s with metallurgy degrees through the efforts of the American Society for Metals. Subsequently, the Engineering Manpower Commission of the Engineers Joint Council and the Office of Education of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare included such degrees in their annual statistics. Thus, the category, “Metallurgical and Materials Engineering” was used for the first time in 1964–65 by the Office of Education in the collection of data on student enrollment and degrees conferred in engineering. In 1967–68, the Engineering Manpower Commission changed the category title to “Materials” which included metallurgical, materials, and ceramics curricula. (Degrees in polymer science were not included, but until very recently, the number of such degrees has been very small and almost entirely at the graduate level.)

It will be seen in Figure 7.47 that during the period 1958–1970, the number of bachelor’s degrees in materials ²⁴ has been approximately constant while the master’s and doctorates conferred annually have grown steadily from 130 and 74 respectively in 1958 to 472 and 298 in 1970. In 1970, 982 bachelor’s, 472 master’s, and 198 doctorates in materials were conferred by the college and universities.

Comparisons of the bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorates conferred in materials with corresponding degrees in other selected fields in engineering are shown in Figures 7.48, 7.49, 7.50, and 7.51. Although, as noted, the master’s and doctorates conferred in materials have shown a steady increase in the last 15 years, the number of these degrees is lower than in chemical, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering. The number of bachelor’s in materials conferred in 1968 was about 2.7% of the total bachelor’s conferred in all fields of engineering. Correspondingly, the master’s and doctorates conferred in materials in 1968 were 4.1% and 7.6% respectively of the total master’s and doctorates conferred in all fields of engineering. Trends in the materials degrees as percentages of the respective degrees in engineering were discussed in connection with Figure 7.32; these percentages have been holding fairly steady for the past 10 years.

Immigration of qualified professionals from other countries appear to have been a significant factor in increasing U.S. manpower in materials. The immigration of scientists and engineers in general into the U.S. developed

developed into a substantial source of such professional manpower during the period 1950–1970. In 1970, 9305 engineers and 3264 natural scientists immigrated into the U.S. Among the natural scientists were 380 agricultural scientists, 388 biologists, 1495 chemists, 162 geologists and geophysicists, 348 mathematicians, 401 physicists, and 90 other natural scientists. Among the engineers were 105 aeronautical, 908 chemical, 1509 civil, 1464 electrical, 356 industrial, 1618 mechanical, 160 metallurgical, 59 mining, 63 sales, and 3063 other engineering. ²⁵ It is reasonable to assume, based on the data obtained from the National Registers, that about 30% of the engineers and about 14% of the natural scientists who immigrated to the U.S. took jobs in some area of MSE. The increase of immigration of engineers and natural scientists for 1970 over 1969 was about 29%. The 9305 immigrant engineers in 1970 represented about 18% of the total bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degrees in engineering conferred in the U.S. in that year.

The immigration of metallurgists, natural scientists, and engineers for the period 1949–1970 ^{25 , 26 , 27} is shown in Figure 7.52. During this period of 21 years, a total of 118,345 engineers and natural scientists immigrated into the U.S. This number is about 9% of the total degrees awarded in engineering and the physical sciences in the U.S. in that same period of time.

For the period 1952–1968, immigration into the U.S. was on a national quota system. ²⁵ At the end of fiscal year 1968, immigration from both hemispheres proceeded on a first-come, first-served basis, with the inflow from the Eastern Hemisphere limited to 170,000 yearly (20,000 maximum from any country), and from the Western Hemisphere limited to 120,000 yearly as a whole. By definition the Western Hemisphere contains North, Central, and South America. The Eastern Hemisphere is the remainder of the world.

According to the National Science Foundation, “As of February 4, 1971, the U.S. Department of Labor revised its procedure for certifying the immigration of scientists and engineers. After that date, such immigrants entering the U.S. under occupational preferences must have a job offer for which domestic workers are not readily available, and their employment must not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of indigenous workers similarly employed in the area of intended employment. As a result, future inflows of scientists and engineers from abroad will probably more closely reflect the demand for such personnel than occurred in the recent past.”

Details on the emigration of scientists and engineers from the U.S. to other countries are not available. Beginning in 1969, the State Department began to maintain records on the number of people who apply for passports to

go abroad for “scientific purposes.” There are indications that some scientists and engineers are immigrating from the U.S. to other countries, but the number is not known. ²⁸

The slow-down in U.S. industrial activity in 1970 and 1971 led to unemployment among scientists and engineers. Accordingly, an attempt was made in the present study to determine whether and to what extent the professionals working in materials differed in their proportion of jobs lost. Data on unemployment among engineers for the months June-July 1971 were obtained in a survey conducted by the Engineers Joint Council at the request of the National Science Foundation. The questionnaire was sent to about 100,000 engineers constituting a 20-percent sample of a mailing list of major engineering professional societies. This list included about 40% of the engineers in the nation. About 65% of the engineers responded to the questionnaire. Since the survey included only a sample of the engineering population, the resulting numbers may not be taken as absolute values; however, the relationships between numbers may be considered significant. Moreover, the data apply to members of engineering societies and are not necessarily representative of all engineers.

The unemployment data for materials engineers in 1969 was 1.7% of Ph.D.’s and 2.2% for non-Ph.D.’s. In June 1970–71, it was found that 2.8% ²⁹ of the professionals in metallurgy were unemployed and another 1.7% ³⁰ had an employment problem, i.e., they were working part-time or in a job that did not require an engineering background. Of course, metallurgy is only one category of the field of materials engineering. This unemployment of 2.8% is slightly less than the 3% average for engineers in general. Unemployment rates for individual fields in engineering are shown in Table 7.54.

For scientists, the National Science Foundation reported that 2.6% were unemployed in the Spring of 1971 ³¹ ; the unemployment rate of all scientists under 30 years old was 5.3%, and the unemployment rate for all scientists with Ph.D.’s was 1.4%. No separate data for scientists in materials were available.

The future demand for materials scientists and engineers, in large part because of the limitations in the detailed statistics available for such manpower, has proved impossible to determine directly. However, studies have been made for science and engineering as a whole and, assuming the field maintains its relationship discussed earlier and follows these trends, the findings may provide some useful indicators.

Brode ³² has argued that the potential supply for scientists and engineers is approximately a fixed percentage of the total population. The annual new supply will be approximately 3.8% of the number of persons reaching age 22, for this percentage seems to represent a ceiling on the number who are motivated and qualified to earn degrees in science and engineering. He concluded that there will be an annual surplus of scientists and engineers until 1986, and a deficit from 1986 to 2005 with the 1968–1986 surplus being about equal to the 1987–2005 deficit. Cartter ³³ studied the doctor’s degrees in the sciences through 1985 and the number of new faculty members required through 1990, and concluded that the demand for new doctors as faculty replacements will be much less than the supply. Thus, people holding new doctor’s degrees will probably turn to the industrial job market in larger numbers during the 1970’s than heretofore. In 1971, Terman ³⁴ stated, “It is clear that the production of Ph.D.’s in science and engineering cannot continue to expand in the 1970’s as it did in the 1960’s. In fact, the great consumers of Ph.D.’s in the 1960’s, namely academic institutions and defense and space activities, will require substantially fewer new Ph.D.’s during the 1970’s. While industrially funded research will continue to grow at perhaps twice the rate of increase of the gross national product, this is not enough to take up the slack. Accordingly, if the new magnificent educational establishment that now exists in this country for producing highly trained scientists and engineers is not to wither away, new outlets must be found for its product. This means searching out new needs and hitherto neglected opportunities, and then developing the manpower markets thus defined.” Wolfe and Kidd ³⁵ examined the future market for Ph.D.’s and concluded that the rate of Ph.D. production must be reduced because the traditional markets for Ph.D.’s i.e., college and university teaching and research or R&D positions in industry and government, cannot absorb the Ph.D.’s of the 1970’s. Many of these Ph.D.’s will have to find other types of positions. Wolfe and Kidd further suggest that the academic community and the government must develop a collective policy which will reduce the rate of production of Ph.D.’s in the future.

The NSF projections ³⁶ for the supply and utilization of science and engineering doctorates in Engineering. Physical Sciences, and Mathematics are summarized in Table 7.55. It should be noted that these are projections and not predictions and should not be considered as valid for individual disciplines. The basic methodology employed by NSF in this study was that of statistically projecting past and current trends, including reasonable

variations, into the future. Probably, the more significant finding of this study is that there may develop a surplus of about 16,000 doctorates in Engineering in 1980. This means that, based on the projections, about 40% of the Engineering doctorates available in 1980 will have to find employment outside of the traditional academic and R&D areas. The supply and utilization of Physical Sciences doctorates appear to be in balance, and there appears to be a 13% surplus of Mathematics doctorates.

Joining a professional or technical society is a conscious act by an individual to declare his active participation in the field encompassed by that society. The motivation to do so differs from one person to the next; a survey by one of the materials societies found these objectives to be most important for individuals in such societies:

There are also other objectives, but it is clear from this survey that the main reason for joining a professional society is the person’s desire to acquire, and remain current with, the body of knowledge which that society represents.

Inasmuch as the field of MSE is so broad and diverse, it is not surprising that there is no single materials science or materials engineering society; rather there are many technical societies in the field, often with quite different technical interests. The National Academy of Sciences listing of societies considered to have a significant materials activity is given in Table 7.56.

Again because of the field’s diversity, persons who join one or another of the materials-related societies may not even be consciously relating to the materials field. Certainly members of societies like the American Ceramic Society, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, the Society of Plastic Engineers, and the American Society for Metals are undoubtedly aware of their direct relation to the materials field because materials is the basic orientation of these societies. On the other hand, members of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Chemical Society, and the American Physical Society may be less aware of their connection to the materials field.

The questions thus arise: Should there be a single comprehensive society of materials science and engineering (or, for that matter, even several societies)? Or, a federation of materials-related societies? It is clear that a professional society must be responsive to the technical needs of the individual: i.e., his need for technical information in his field of activity through discussions and meetings with his peers, publications of the society, etc. Every professional has knowledge in a core set of technical principles such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, and has additional wider rings of knowledge which provide background for his more specific technical interests. The professional also needs a body of knowledge related to the major field of his occupation. Consequently, individuals tend to join those technical societies which come closest to their composite fields of interest, if this is possible. In addition, professionals often associate with divisions of a society having a more specific interest; for instance, the Polymers Division of the American Chemical Society. The fact that there are so many technical societies in the broad field of MSE suggests that the technical needs of materials professionals can be adequately met, but it requires several memberships.

However, for this very reason, the professional area of MSE faces various problems. Many societies with memberships less than about 10,000 are financially limited from providing a full range of services to their members, or even from offering their present services at the least cost. Combining certain staff functions of many societies such as publications, meeting arrangements, and even accounting, would reduce the fixed costs for each and thereby permit additional services. This kind of cooperation need not diminish the technical vigor and competitive character involved in the constituencies of different societies. Probably the greatest disadvantage of the separateness of professional societies in materials is that, with only a few exceptions, the individual societies are not large enough or strong enough to have a significant voice in public affairs and governmental actions which affect the individual professional or his technical field. An illustrative public policy issue is that the cost/benefit ratio in the disposal recycling of solid waste might be optimized by a broad materials approach which would lead to the installation of municipal waste-disposal systems to recover all materials of value for recycling, and to treat the remainder in the most efficient way for disposal. Another example of the value of a materials-system approach to national problems is furnished by the analysis in Chapter 5*about materials in transportation, which points out the problems and consequences involved in providing materials for automotive emission-control systems. A professional society representing the total materials field might better provide the public and the state and federal governments with technical guidance in such public issues.

There is no lack of such public policy issues. They include:

In dealing with these issues, scientific and engineering societies have several options. They can develop and publish objective analyses of major problems. They can adopt or oppose a particular position in Congressional testimony, in dealings with federal agencies, by news releases, or in other ways. Societies or their members can form new groups specifically to cope with one or more special questions. All of these options are exercised from time to time by societies and special-purpose groups of scientists or engineers. The technical societies have tended to focus their efforts of this type at objective analyses of major problems in public policy that fall within their particular technical competence.

In this respect, scientific and engineering societies have found active encouragement from government on the grounds that failure of societies to involve themselves in the legislative process creates an imbalance in the flow of information to Congress. The ethical obligation of professionals to speak out on technical issues of public concern has recently been emphasized by the creation of a “Clearinghouse for Professional Responsibility.” This body receives and investigates complaints of alleged unethical or wasteful practices of organizations and advises on possible courses of action when such practices are found. Technical societies could serve the public by judging whether or not this idea of a “Clearinghouse” has merit, and might consider undertaking a similar role themselves.

How can a professional society of materials science and engineering serve the varied technical needs of individuals in the field and at the same time speak out on broad national problems involving materials? A good possibility to achieve this lies in the recent formation of the Federation of Materials Societies. The formal examination of a Federation of Materials Societies started* at a meeting convened in March 1968 by the National Materials Advisory Board with the societies represented in the National Research Council. At least 36 societies have a significant degree of interest, and usually activity, in the general area of materials, although in many of these societies such interest is not dominant. Eighteen of the 36 societies believed to have a more identified interest with the materials field were invited to send representatives to an informal session for the planning of a conference on the subject in Washington on 14 August 1970. After subsequent discussions and planning sessions, ten of the societies agreed in 1971 to form a steering group to delve more deeply into organizational matters and to explore early opportunities for cooperative action.

The general reasons for establishing a Federation of Materials Societies formulated at these various meetings are as follows:

These same discussions recognized that such a Federation:

At the present time, the Federation has the following 11 member societies (and several others in observer status):

Among the activities in progress are: a survey of materials education activities in universities and technical societies, a life-cycle study of aluminum (as the beginning of a series), bibliographic reports on materials wastage by corrosion and wear, and an analysis of sources of technical information on materials. In addition, the Federation is initiating a newsletter Materials and Resources News.