This talk will discuss the evolution of materials from being commodities which found broad applications to being materials systems viewed in terms of their utilizable knowledge content. The evolution will be set in a social and historical context to demonstrate the impact of materials on the development of societal infrastructure. In the second half of the talk emphasis will be placed on both the integration of basic scientific concepts and predictive mathematical models into the development of metallurgical processes. The theme of the presentation is that materials have moved from being commodities which find applications and markets to quantities which have value added via their knowledge content. This leads to a gradual integration of product design and process optimisation which is compatible with new societal demands such as e-commerce and recyclability. I hope Keith Brimacombe would have been interested in this view of the evolution of materials and his important contributions to this evolutionary process.
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