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Memorial Tributes, Volume 12
ALEXANDER ROBERT TROIANO 1908–2002
Elected in 1986
“For distinguished contributions to understanding themechanical behavior of metals, and to the education of metallurgists.”
BY ARTHUR H. HEUER AND GARY M. MICHAL
ALEXANDER ROBERT TROIANO, Republic Steel Professor Emeritus of Case Western University, died June 12, 2002. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 5, 1908, Troiano attended Boston public schools, then Harvard University, where he received an A.B. in physics and mathematics in 1931. After four years as an instructor of physics at Middlesex College, he returned to Harvard for graduate study. He received his M.S. in 1937 in metallurgical engineering through a cooperative program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From 1937 to 1939, he was Gordon McKay Fellow and instructor in physical metallurgy at Harvard, and, in 1939, he received an Sc.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Engineering. His thesis, under the aegis of A.B. Greninger, was a pioneering investigation of the crystallography of the martensite transformation in steels.
At a time when a fierce controversy was raging about the decomposition of austenite at low temperatures, Troiano and Greninger established unequivocally the essential and distinct kinetic behavior of the martensite transformation. They also provided new information on, and insight into, the crystallography and mechanism of the martensite reaction.
