1925–2009

Elected in 1975

“For contributions to dislocation behavior of ceramics, disclination behavior of polymers, leadership in development and production of metal glasses.”

BY JOHN D. MACKENZIE

JOHN JOSEPH (JACK) GILMAN, adjunct professor with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), passed away on September 10, 2009, at the age of 83.

Jack Gilman was indisputably one of the most renowned materials scientists in the world in the field of mechanical properties of solids. He was born on December 22, 1925, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1946 and his M.S. in 1948, both from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He then proceeded to Columbia University where he received a Ph.D. in physical metallurgy in 1952. After a short stay at the Crucible Steel Company of America where he did research on steels, he joined the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, in 1952. There he was given total freedom to study the mechanical properties and structure of single crystals.

Jack made good use of his freedom and his talents and started a fundamental research program on dislocations and their role in the deformation of solids. His collaboration with W. G. Johnston and others at General Electric resulted in many publications on dislocations in highly respected journals, such as Philosophical Magazine and the Journal of Applied Physics,