Abstract
A “young”, rather unknown scientist, with a finding/idea overthrowing established knowledge, more than rarely meets enormous resistance by the “old” scientists constituting the “elite” in the field of science concerned. This chapter recounts the history of three such “fights”: the discovery of “quasicrystals”, the “Kirkendall effect” and a debate on the occurrence of “clusters” or “precipitates”.
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Notes
- 1.
“Old” and “young” as used here do not immediately bear a relation with ages. The junior, unknown researcher opposing the establishment may already be mature and experienced. This holds for the first example discussed (Sect. 9.1). Indeed, in the second example the junior researcher is moreover rather young of age (Sect. 9.2).
- 2.
Another type of aperiodic crystals is the “incommensurately modulated atomic structure”: a modulation is superimposed on the parent crystal structure. The modulation can be of compositional nature or of positional nature. If that modulation is incommensurate then it equals an irrational number of a translation period of the underlying parent crystal structure, i.e. x times the translational period of the parent crystal structure can never equal y times the translational period of the modulation. The existence of such incommensurately modulated crystal structures has been reported increasingly since 1950.
- 3.
In these days discussion of oral presentations at a meeting were taken much more serious than nowadays. In present-day meetings five minutes per oral presentation may be allotted for discussion of work presented. In that way no significant exchanges of opinions can occur. This is regrettable, as progress of science depends on discussion, especially in case of controversial results as is the case here.
In 1981 I attended the conference “Heat Treatment ‘81”, organized by the The Heat Treatment Committee of The Metals Society (Birmingham, UK). This was the first and last conference, that I attended, where not only lengthy discussion time was reserved but also the discussion was recorded and typed in shorthand and then, of course, taken up, in edited form, in the published proceedings of the meeting. Even now, rereading these published discussions is not only a pleasure but also very informative and promoting scientific understanding, also because participants in the discussion used the occasion to briefly present own (preliminary) results of relevance to the discussed theme (precisely this is also the case in the discussions of the Kirkendall/Smigelskas and Darken papers dealt with above). One may suspect on the one hand, that the costs of preservation of such discussions nowadays are considered as too high, but, on the other hand, it may very well be that many presentations at nowadays conferences are considered to be too unsubstantial and/or of a too low quality, that substantial discussion would be worthwhile (see Chap. 6, where it is argued that the average quality of nowadays published papers is lower than in the past).
- 4.
To explain this name: the Me (e.g. Cr) atoms reside on sites of the parent (iron) crystal structure (i.e. they are substitutional solute atoms); the N atoms reside on interstitial sites of the parent iron crystal structure (i.e. between the sites, on interstices, of the parent (iron) crystal structure; i.e. the N atoms are interstitial solute atoms).
It may be argued that any precipitation process of a compound in a supersaturated matrix begins with the transport of dissolved atoms to the site where the precipitation is to be initiated. For some time an enrichment of these dissolved atoms on sites of the parent crystal may exist before a precipitate particle with its crystal structure different from the parent matrix develops. These enrichments, devoid of long range ordering and therefore called “clusters”, in some, rather rare cases, can exist for a considerable period of time. For example, they have been proven to occur in aluminium-copper (Al-Cu) and aluminium-magnesium (Al–Mg) alloys. These clusters have been called Guinier–Preston (GP) zones after their discoverers. However, in many other systems no cluster stage is observed at all; more or less immediately extremely small nanoparticles with the crystal structure of the precipitating compound, and no clusters/enrichments of dissolved atoms on sites of the parent crystal structure, are detected. In case of the precipitation of α”-nitride in iron supersaturated with nitrogen, clustering of nitrogen is (already) unlikely to occur, as the nitrogen atoms, moving from interstitial site to interstitial site, arriving at the site of precipitation have only to occupy specific interstitial sites in order to realize the α”-nitride crystal structure, in association with pronounced relieve of (strain) energy. Indeed, no evidence for a distinct clustering stage in this system has ever been presented. On the contrary, in the very first stage of precipitation the crystalline α”-nitride has been identified (see also “Iron Nitrides and Iron Carbides; Tempering of Steels and Pre-Precipitation Processes” in Chap. 10).
- 5.
I am grateful to Marcel Somers who kept a copy of the referee report; the original got lost upon my move to Stuttgart in 1998.
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Mittemeijer, E.J. (2022). “Young” Versus “Old”. In: How Science Runs. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90095-3_9
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