Robert W. Cahn
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Robert Wolfgang Cahn FRS (9 September 1924 – 9 April 2007) was a British
metallurgist Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...
whose contributions to physical
metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...
centred on the properties of
dislocation In materials science, a dislocation or Taylor's dislocation is a linear crystallographic defect or irregularity within a crystal structure that contains an abrupt change in the arrangement of atoms. The movement of dislocations allow atoms to sli ...
s. Cahn developed a successful model for the nucleation of recrystallisation, which underpinned research into industrial processes involving high-temperature deformation. He also contributed substantially to the crystallography of
uranium Uranium is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Ura ...
.R. W. Cahn, The Art of Belonging (Book Guild Publishing, Sussex, UK, 2005) In later life he made a great contribution to scientific editing, editing both scientific textbooks such as the comprehensive Physical Metallurgy, co-edited, with Peter Haasen, a standard reference work in the field.


Upbringing

Cahn was born to an affluent Jewish family in
Fürth Fürth (; East Franconian German, East Franconian: ; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in northern Bavaria, Germany, in the administrative division (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Middle Franconia. It is the Franconia#Towns and cities, s ...
, in northern
Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
, Germany, on 9 September 1924. His turbulent childhood undoubtedly had an influence on the determination with which he approached his professional life, "his legendary impatience", and his wide cultural interests. Cahn's father, Martin Cahn, came from a religious, but assimilated, Jewish family which had included successive heads of Jewish communities in small settlements in Baden. He worked as an accountant for the mirror factory of Robert's maternal grandfather, Hugo Heinemann. Young Robert was raised in a flat in the centre of
Fürth Fürth (; East Franconian German, East Franconian: ; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in northern Bavaria, Germany, in the administrative division (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Middle Franconia. It is the Franconia#Towns and cities, s ...
, and for three years in a modernist style house on the outskirts. In July 1933, his father's marriage to Else being on the point of collapse and the children having been persecuted on account of their being Jewish, the family fled to Switzerland from where Robert went with his mother and grandfather to
Majorca Mallorca, or Majorca, is the largest of the Balearic Islands, which are part of Spain, and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, seventh largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The capital of the island, Palma, Majorca, Palma, i ...
and Martin to London to establish a new business. Cahn joined his father in London in 1936 and was introduced to the musical soirées and cultural circle of friends his father had developed. Sent by his father to Maiden Erlegh House School at
Earley Earley ( ) is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Wokingham, Berkshire, England. Along with the neighbouring town of Woodley, Berkshire, Woodley, the Office for National Statistics places Earley within the Reading/Wokingham Urban Area; fo ...
, Berkshire, a school with absolutely no academic pretensions, he was left largely to his own devices. At the age of fifteen he moved to the
Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School Haberdashers' Boys' School (formerly Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School) is a 4–18 boys Independent school (United Kingdom) in Elstree, Hertfordshire, England. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. The school was ...
at
Cricklewood Cricklewood is a town in North London, England, in the London Boroughs of Camden, Barnet, and Brent. The Crown pub, now the Clayton Crown Hotel, is a local landmark and lies north-west of Charing Cross. Cricklewood was a small rural hamlet ...
, but took himself out of the school in 1940. Following a brief interlude in London, he escaped the Blitz to
Workington Workington is a coastal town and civil parish in the Cumberland district of Cumbria, England. The town is at the mouth of the River Derwent on the west coast, south-west of Carlisle and north-east of Whitehaven. At the 2021 census the ...
, Cumbria where he had two years of excellent teaching at the local technical school and discovered a lifelong passion for mountain walking. From the moment he left Germany until his naturalisation in 1947, he was a
stateless person Stateless may refer to: Society * Anarchism, a political philosophy opposed to the institution of the state * Stateless communism, which Karl Marx predicted would be the final phase of communism * Stateless nation, a group of people without a ...
and this had a major psychological influence on him and fuelled his desire to achieve and integrate in his new homeland. He became fervently proud of his adopted country and, following his naturalisation, of his Britishness, developing a great facility in his adopted English language which stood him in good stead for his later remarkable activity as a scientific editor. Paradoxically his life experience had developed in him wide, very continental, cultural tastes, and extensive international contacts and his travels across Europe resulted in a fluency in four languages.


University education

In 1942, he enrolled at
Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any ...
to study Metallurgy. There, in 1943, he met Pat Hanson, the daughter of a distinguished professor of metallurgy who was studying English, and who was to become his wife in 1947. In 1945, he studied for a doctorate under
Egon Orowan Egon Orowan FRS () (2 August 1902 – 3 August 1989) was a Hungarian-British physicist and metallurgist.Nabarro, F.R.N. and Argon, A. S.Egon Orowan. 1901—1989: A Biographical Memoir" Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1996. p. 2 ...
at the
Cavendish Laboratory The Cavendish Laboratory is the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, and is part of the School of Physical Sciences. The laboratory was opened in 1874 on the New Museums Site as a laboratory for experimental physics and is named ...
. The objective of his research was to prove the existence of dislocations, whose existence had been postulated by Orowan and others before the war. Using studies of single crystal wires of zinc, Cahn demonstrated by X-ray diffraction that long strain-free crystallites had formed by recrystallisation following heating of a deformed wire. Optical observation under a microscope showed that these were accurately perpendicular to the glide planes. Consultations with
Alan Cottrell Sir Alan Howard Cottrell, FRS (17 July 1919 – 15 February 2012) was an English metallurgist and physicist. He was also former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government and vice-chancellor of Cambridge University 1977–1979. Early ...
at Birmingham had confirmed that this arrangement was to be expected on theoretical grounds if dislocations existed.


Career

Cahn left Cambridge in 1947 to take up a research post at Harwell
Atomic Energy Research Establishment The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE), also known as Harwell Laboratory, was the main Headquarters, centre for nuclear power, atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from 1946 to the 1990s. It was created, owned ...
with a salary that enabled him to get married. He completed his doctoral research without supervision, Orowan rarely wrote up the work of his doctoral students and Cahn finally wrote it up alone in 1949. At Harwell, Robert continued his researches into the process of "deformation twinning"
Crystal twinning Crystal twinning occurs when two or more adjacent crystals of the same mineral are oriented so that they share some of the same crystal lattice points in a symmetrical manner. The result is an intergrowth of two separate crystals that are tightl ...
where he demonstrated a new type of twinning in uranium crystals. However, as the only person undertaking fundamental research,at Harwell, Cahn felt isolated and in 1951 he moved to Birmingham to the Department of his father in law, Daniel Hanson. Here he supervised research students concentrating on twinning, intermetallics and the formation of crystal nuclei during recrystallisation. These themes remained the centre of Cahn's attention for the remainder of his academic life. Following a sabbatical at
Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...
, Baltimore in 1954, he turned down a professorship at Liverpool on the promise of a professorship in Birmingham that never materialised. Cahn moved to a professorship at Bangor in 1962. However the centre of interest of the department, semiconductors, left little room for Cahn's main interests. Therefore, in 1965 Cahn moved to the
University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...
to become the first Professor of Materials Science in Britain, developing the country's first courses in materials science. Under his leadership, the department managed to attract excellent staff and research funding and undertake a wide range of well respected research, in particular on metallic glasses and rapid cooling. At this time Cahn both developed his scientific editing and became President of the Materials Science Club. In 1981-2 the Department at Sussex was the victim of severe cutbacks in the university sector, and the Materials Science Department, with an excellent research reputation but with a small number of undergraduates (due to the unconventional nature of the subject), was earmarked for closure. Cahn took early retirement and went for two stressful years to the University of Paris, Orsa

returning to retirement in Cambridge in 1983. It was in that same year that he was awarded the
A. A. Griffith Medal and Prize The A. A. Griffith Medal and Prize was awarded annually from 1965 to 2021 by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in commemoration of Alan Arnold Griffith. History The award was established by the Materials Science Club of Great Britain ...
. He remained there until his death in 2007, from 1986 as an Honorary Research Fellow in Cambridge's Department of Metallurgy and Materials Scienc

Apart from one year spent in the US in 1985–6, Cahn's main output in these final years was his editing work.


Editing

Cahn became editor of the new ''Journal of Nuclear Materials'' in 1959. He was offered the editorship of the first journal in the field, the ''
Journal of Materials Science The ''Journal of Materials Science'' is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of materials science. It was established in 1966 by Robert W. Cahn and is published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal incorporated ...
'', in 1964 literally en route between Bangor and Sussex Universities. This was the start of a spectacular burgeoning of the scientific editing work that was to be the trademark of his later years. He says in his memoirs that he regarded the years he devoted to creating this journal as the most important single editorial role he played. He later also acted as an editor of the Journal of Materials Research from 1985 and established a new journal, Intermetallic

in 1992. In 1961 Cahn started editing the monumental work "Physical Metallurgy, first published in 1965. which went through four editions, the last two edited in collaboration with Peter Haasen of
Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...
. In 1986 Cahn, Haasen and Edward Kramer started work on a new series of multi-authored books, "Materials Science and Technology: A Comprehensive Treatment" which eventually contained 20 volumes, republished in 2005. Two further series of books on solid materials were edited, the Cambridge Solid State Science Series from 1992 and the Pergamon Materials Series from 1992 onwards. In 1998 he was one of six editors in chief for Elsevier's 11-volume Encyclopedia of Materials series. Cahn also wrote for a wider public. From 1967 until 2001 Cahn was Materials science correspondent for the news and comments section of Natur

the premier British science journal. Popular articles on a wide range of topics were assembled in a book Artifice and Artifacts published in 1992. In 2001 Cahn's book The Coming of Materials Science outlined the development of the subject.


General

Despite his very specialised expertise, Cahn was an intellectual polymath of the old school who pushed hard for the integration of scientific and artistic skills. At Birmingham he organised a well received Art in Science exhibition, at Sussex he was on the governing committee of the
Science Policy Research Unit The Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) is a research centre based at the University of Sussex in Falmer, near Brighton, United Kingdom. Its research focuses on science policy and innovation. SPRU offers MSc courses and PhD research degrees. ...
, and he became external examiner for the Liberal Studies in Science course at the
University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...
. A very widely read man, he was as able to hold forth on literature and art as on science. For example, he contributed a survey of the sociology of innovation. In 2004 ''Journal of Materials Science'' published a bibliography including 3 biographies, 10 topical articles, and 16 more philosophical, all relating to the history of materials science. Cahn was notable for his international range of contacts and the support he gave to the development of international links to promote the development of metallurgy and materials science in developing countries. From 1955 he contributed to the development of metallurgy in
Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
, and made repeated visits to the research centre Instituto de Fisica de Bariloche in the
Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...
. Later he developed close links with Indian metallurgy and materials science, through former researchers in his departments at Bangor and Sussex, and in his final years his contribution to Chinese metallurgy was recognised with honorary membership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
of London in 1991. He was a foreign member of the
Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Göttingen Academy of Sciences (name since 2023 : )Note that the German ''Wissenschaft'' has a wider meaning than the English "Science", and includes Social sciences and Humanities. is the oldest continuously existing institution among the eig ...
, the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences and the
Indian National Science Academy The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three b ...
.


Personal life

Cahn died of myelodysplasia induced leukaemia on 9 April 2007 in
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...
, England. His four children includes
Andrew Cahn Sir Andrew Thomas Cahn, KCMG (born 1 April 1951) is Chair of the Council of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and a former senior civil servant. Career In January 2011, Cahn stepped down after five years in charge of UK Trade & In ...
.


References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cahn, Robert W. 1924 births 2007 deaths British metallurgists Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Foreign fellows of the Indian National Science Academy Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Academics of the University of Sussex