Tributes to Sir Alan Cottrell
ScD, FRS, FREng, LLD (Hon)
Matters of State Peter Hirsch (1943)
A
lan Cottrell believed in studying problems of national importance. Thus, in 1955, he left his flourishing research group in the Birmingham University Metallurgy Department to become Deputy Head of the Metallurgy Division at Harwell, where nationally important research was done. There his pioneering work on creep and swelling of uranium under neutron irradiation led to a redesign of the fuel rods in Magnox civil nuclear reactors. Alan study of embrittlement of steels by neutron irradiation remains relevant to the integrity of pressure vessels in nuclear reactors. In 1957 a nuclear reactor at Windscale caught fire, caused by the energy released during annealing of the irradiation damage in the graphite core. Alan showed that the Magnox reactors would be immune to this self-heating effect, a conclusion vital to the introduction of the Magnox power stations in the 1960s. In 1958 Alan became Head of the Cambridge Metallurgy Department, which he transformed into a world-class institution. However, in 1964 he joined the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall as Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, hoping to promote policies there to invigorate British manufacturing Industry with scientific technology, which he felt were urgently needed.
Alan Cottrell with ash tray; Part II Metallurgy (now Materials Science) classes at Cambridge have cast many of these over the years. We each occupy posts once held by Sir Alan Cottrell, who was first known to us when we were undergraduates in Cambridge. To Lindsay at that time, Alan was the author of the key texts for his materials science course; to Ian, Alan was the Master of his College. So it is a personal privilege for us to provide the introduction to this memorial set of articles collected by the Department and College. The articles constitute a celebration of Alan’s professional life, touching academia, industry and government, and we thank their authors for making so clear why Alan was (to quote one of our most distinguished alumni) “not just an individual but an institution, a king among men”.
In Denis Healey’s defence review, Alan’s study of a military presence in the East, led to the cancellation of the Government’s East of Suez policy. In 1966, he became Deputy, and in 1971 Chief Scientific Adviser at the Cabinet Office. There he studied inter alia the brain drain, environment and pollution, the Advance Passenger Train, and the Torrey Canyon disaster. He also contributed to Rothschild’s ‘customer-contractor’ policy, aimed at making the independent research councils’ work more relevant to national needs. Alan’s advice during his Whitehall period was much respected and influential. In 1974 he expressed concern about the integrity of the steel pressure vessel, a critical part in pressurised water reactors, favoured by Walter Marshall for the civil nuclear programme. In response Marshall formed a committee to study the safety issues. The committee’s report persuaded Alan that a sufficiently robust safety case could be established. This report, with Alan’s endorsement had a major impact on the Sizewell B enquiry and the Nuclear Installation Inspectorate’s approval, and led generally to more stringent requirements for ensuring the integrity of safety critical structures. Alan believed that nuclear energy was an important, safe energy resource. His work in this field was outstanding and remains very influential.
States of Matter Anthony Kelly (1949)
Lindsay Greer
Head of the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy
Ian White
Master of Jesus College
A
lan Cottrell has been a wonderful help throughout my scientific career. Practical work for my first degree (Physics at Reading) included the study of ferromagnetic domains, which led to an interest in subgrains in metals, and my entering the Cavendish to do a PhD under Lawrence
Jack Nutting, Alan Cottrell, Gerry Smith and Tony Kelly enjoy a moment's relaxation
B
ragg. I became a metallurgist and fell under the spell of Alan Cottrell, then at Birmingham, who made suggestions, examined my PhD, and became a friend. During my time at Northwestern, the first department in the world to nominate ‘Materials Science’ as a discipline, Cottrell intimated to me that he hoped to move to Cambridge and would seek to have a lectureship created. I was much interested ─ and very luckily appointed. Alan asked me to prepare a lecture course on ceramics. In contrast to the then customary ceramics courses, I incorporated topics such as the physical interpretation of Moh’s hardness scale and the difficulty of moving dislocations through sapphire. This made me proficient in ceramics and put me in touch with Watt at Farnborough (the inventor of carbon fibre): hence I saw clearly as a consultant what happened there. I worked on the deformation of age-hardened alloys and noticed the rapid rate of work hardening of alloys containing nondeforming particles. I was fascinated when Alan showed me the text of his lecture to the Royal Institution in 1960, describing fibre reinforcement as a means of improving the strength of materials: “the practical approach is to admit the existence of cracks and notches and to try to render them innocuous”, proceeding to illustrate this by considering a rod formed of a bundle of parallel fibres held together by an adhesive and pointing out the potential of using fibres made from materials with very strong interatomic forces (e.g. refractory oxides and carbides). It was all there, new to me, and fitted in exactly with the overaged state of alloys hardened by strong particles. I immediately asked Bill Tyson to investigate the validity of Cottrell’s idea with a metallic matrix as the adhesive. Tyson went to work with a will and produced a set of principles, of the colligative mechanical properties of an aligned fibre-reinforced system. As a result I was able to produce a text, Strong Solids, covering metals, ceramics and plastic-based composites, which was very influential at that time. Alan was very helpful and made an important detailed personal contribution. We had made one of the fundamental discoveries needed: a new means of dissipating energy. When a fibrous composite breaks not all fibres fracture in the plane of fracture; rather there is pull-out of fibres, providing a substantial work of fracture. Alan, combining his characteristic skill with simple algebra and his deep understanding of the physical principles, quickly derived the first estimate of the work of fracture due to pull-out. Subsequently with Cooper, I found the other method of conferring toughness namely multiple fracture ─ later developed very professionally by Derek Hull during his short period in the Cambridge Materials Department. In 1966, Alan and I wrote a review of what we thought would be the future of fibrous composite materials. We are lucky – a lot of it turns out to be correct!
Cottrell AH and Kelly A, Endeavour, 25, 27 (1966). Kelly A, 1958-67 in Advances in Physical Metallurgy, JA Charles and GC Smith (Eds), Institute of Metals, pp171-181, (1990). Kelly A, Composites Science and Technology 65, 2285-2294, (2005).
FIM - A Very Personal Thank You David Brandon (1953)
A
t the 1958 International Congress on Electron Microscopy in Berlin, Erwin Müller demonstrated atomic resolution at 21K in the ‘field-ion microscope’. The samples were the hemispherical tips of sharp refractory metal needles. Back in Cambridge, my research supervisor, Jack Nutting, showed me Müller’s sensational ‘field ion’ images and asked me to lead a project to build a field-ion microscope. I hesitantly agreed. The next thing I knew Jack and I were in Alan Cottrell’s office. I would be given the time to complete my doctoral thesis, research students would be allocated to work with me and I would have laboratory space and funding (from the UKAEA). I was to prepare a research programme for Alan Cottrell’s approval and report directly to him. The ultimate objective was to learn more about radiation damage at the atomic level. Three excellent research students arrived: Piers Bowden, a talented metallurgist who would construct a low-energy ion source for the controlled injection of point defects into a sample surface; Mike Wald, an experienced Israeli physicist, who took charge of the construction of the first field-ion microscope, and Mike Southon, a newly-qualified Cambridge physicist who studied the twin processes of field ionization of the projection imaging gas, and field evaporation of surface atoms, the process used to smooth the metal needle and uncover the sub-surface atomic layers. Progress was fast and Alan Cottrell was able to give several public lectures on our work, first at the Institute of Metals and subsequently at the Royal Institution. The following year, our research team was doubled: Srinivasa Ranganathan, a metallurgist from Benares Hindu University, concentrated on grain-boundary morphology; Brian Ralph, a Cambridge metallurgist, studied alloy systems, and Joe Reich a skilled technician, found anything we needed and made what he couldn’t find. With Alan Cottrell’s light touch on the tiller we navigated any number of potential catastrophes, including the contamination of one complete microscope and vacuum system after the rupture of the window on a polonium particle source.
I joined a group under David Dew-Hughes whom Alan had recruited from Yale because of his work on semiconductors. No university was working on the metallurgy of superconducting alloys at that time. The other students were Jan Evetts and Anant Narlikar who went on to a successful career at the National Physical Laboratory in Delhi. The most striking contrast with the present day was the speed at which research could be carried out. There was a students’ workshop so that if you wanted a bit of brass or a hole drilled you just went and did it yourself (health and safety was in its infancy and trial and error was the way to proceed). This certainly needed to be improved, but financial bureaucracy and central purchasing is now a major drag on research. If I wanted a bit of plumbing I could get an order form from the secretary, Miss Levett, saying ‘tools to choice’, go to Mackays in East Road, find what I wanted, sign for it, and be back in the lab in an hour. Similarly x-y recorders and analogue voltmeters were much quicker to get going than computers and data processors. At that time the Department was a comparatively small and friendly place so that there was a good interaction between the members. Whenever a student passed his PhD, we would all go down to the Bun Shop to celebrate.
Field-ion micrograph of tungsten, <110> axis at centre, S. Ranganathan PhD thesis (1965) I finally met Erwin Müller at a Field-Emission Symposium in 1961. After my presentation, Erwin stood up and told me that our images were ‘no good’: from ‘bad tips’ that contained defects. I explained that it was precisely these defects that interested us and only the field-ion microscope could resolve these defects in atomic detail. A year later, Müller asked me to organize the 1964 Field-Emission Symposium in Cambridge. By the time of this symposium I had officially left the group, but, with Alan Cottrell’s support, plans were well-advanced to build a field-ion atom probe microscope for sub-micron chemical analysis, as well as ultra-high vacuum field-ion microscopes for steels and aluminium alloys. Under Alan Cottrell’s guidance, the Cambridge FIM group continued to have a major impact on the study of crystal lattice defects. Alan Cottrell’s leadership, good humour and patience were crucial. He gave us the freedom to make our own mistakes, correcting major blunders only by saying, very gently, “I don’t think that can be quite right”. He was my much-loved mentor.
The Superconductivity Group Archie Campbell (1959)
I
n 1962, I graduated in physics and looked for an interesting PhD topic. One possibility was work on superconductors in the Metallurgy Department, a department I had never entered at that time. Nor had I heard of superconductors, which seemed almost magical, a form of perpetual motion. Since in those days, university lectureships were easy to come by (this did not last long), I thought this would be an interesting topic to work on for a few years before getting a proper job. That was fifty years ago and I have continued to find the subject fascinating. There can be few other subjects which allow one person to contribute to basic electromagnetism, quantum devices, and gigawatt electrical generators. The seed for this was provided by Alan Cottrell’s recognition that the subject of superconductivity had progressed from rather pure physics to an interdisciplinary subject requiring materials science. It was inspired timing as the idea that superconducting alloys were filled with threads of superconductor ‘sponge’, possibly dislocations, was overtaken by the theory of superconducting vortices pinned by defects. This provided a close analogy with the pinning of dislocations which determines the yield stress, so the work in the Department on dislocations was extremely stimulating.
Alan’s foresight can be seen in subsequent developments. Jan Evetts built the group into one of the largest in the country. He spread out into thin-film technology with Rob Somekh and Zoe Barber and the group now makes a wide range of devices and nano-materials. I was given a job in the Cambridge Department of Engineering by Mike Ashby and moved to more applied work, such as AC losses and electrical machines. In 1987 the subject was revolutionised, in some ways, by the discovery of superconductivity at liquid nitrogen temperatures. The combination of the superconductivity work in Engineering and Jan Evetts’ group in Metallurgy was a major consideration in the establishment of the first IRC in Cambridge. The work continues with three major groups in Materials Science and two in Engineering and a total of about sixty researchers, while students from the group will be found in chairs all over the world. This is all the result of Alan’s remarkable insight fifty years ago.
Understanding Fracture John Knott (1959)
A
lan’s interest in fracture comprehended three strands: the micro-structural scale, the macroscopic scale, and the (crack-tip) atomic scale. In 1958 he wrote a magnificent paper on cleavage fracture in steel. He postulated that intersecting slip bands could produce cleavage crack nuclei on the observed {001} cleavage fracture planes and calculated that, if this occurred with decrease in energy, fracture would be ‘propagation-controlled’. This enabled him to provide an explanation for effects of notches on cleavage fracture, which the previous Zener/Stroh theories of fracture had failed to do. Already fascinated by brittle fracture, this paper fired-up my enthusiasm and led to me coming to Cambridge in 1959. When I arrived, Alan confronted me with stress-concentrations, notches, slip-line-field theory and the embryonic Bilby-CottrellSwinden (BCS) theory, which represented a crack under Mode III loading (anti-plane shear) in terms of distributions (‘inverse pile-ups’) of screw dislocations: ‘virtual’ within the crack; real outside the crack. This enabled calculations to be made of size effects on brittle fracture, which he presented at an Iron and Steel Institute meeting on ‘Steels for Reactor Pressure Circuits’ (1960) and again at a conference marking the opening of the Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories in 1961. The full BCS paper was published in Proc. Roy. Soc. in 1963. My thesis work, on the critical tensile stress criterion for cleavage fracture, was published in 1963 and I was followed by John Griffiths, who worked on brittle fracture in silicon-iron. In 1963, Alan delivered the Bakerian Lecture, entitled ‘Fracture’. He covered micro-mechanisms of both brittle and ductile fracture, and also differentiated between modes of fracture propagation in plane strain and plane stress. In his 1965 paper, ‘Mechanics
My three years coincided with several academics commencing their teaching careers. Alan, Robin Nicholson, Tony Kelly and Jim Charles all gave their first lecture series in this period, although this was not known to us at the time, and we had no knowledge of the career background or research reputation of any of the academics. Many of us had come from two years National Service and I recall we were a little disrespectful of our teachers at times and had to be given a verbal warning from our tutors on more than one occasion! Each lecturer had a distinct style, which became clear early on in a lecture course. Paper handouts (then foolscap size, not A4) were extremely rare in those days and most of us attempted to take longhand notes as fast as we could. The process of taking notes, being able to read our own writing later, and yet understanding what the lecturer was putting across, was not easy. There was no space for questions in either Part I or Part II lectures and clarification of lecture content usually had to wait until the next supervision back at College.
Alan Cottrell, as Vice-Chancellor, accompanies the Chancellor, Prince Philip, on his visit to the Department on 7 February 1978 of Fracture in Large Structures’, these were to become defined as ‘non-cumulative’ and ‘cumulative’ modes, respectively. In this paper, he also discussed the crack-arrest temperature and emphasised the importance of discontinuous mechanisms of crack propagation for ‘semi-brittle’ crack advance. Alan’s interest in the behaviour of material ahead of a sharp crack at the atomic scale was apparent in his 1963 Tewksbury Lecture. ‘Mechanisms of Fracture’, in which he approximated the neartip atomic force/displacement field by a rectilinear form. A much more substantial paper was that published with Tony Kelly and Bill Tyson in 1967 entitled ‘Ductile and Brittle Crystals’. This treated the balance between the fracture of the crack-tip bond and the ease of generating dislocations, to blunt the crack involving a consideration of the values of Young’s modulus and the shear modulus, respectively (with attention paid to the crystallography of available slip systems). This paper has been extremely influential, and, inter alia, has been used in recent years by Lindsay Greer to explain the fracture behaviour of metallic glasses. Alan’s interest in the basic mechanisms of fracture underpinned his statements on the risk of fracture in nuclear pressure vessels and his views were recognised as authoritative and based on uncompromising science. Cottrell AH, Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Metall. Petrol Engrs. 202,192203 (1958). Bilby BA Cottrell AH and Swinden KH, Proc. Roy. Soc. A272, 304315 (1963). Knott JF and Cottrell AH, J. Iron and Steel Inst. 201, 249-260 (1963). Cottrell AH, Proc. Roy. Soc. A276 pp.1-18 (1963). Cottrell AH, Proc. Roy. Soc. A285 pp.10-21 (1965). Kelly A, Tyson WR and Cottrell AH, Phil. Mag. 15, 567-586 (1967.
An Undergraduate View Richard Dolby (1958)
A
lan came to the Department in 1958, my first year in the Natural Sciences Tripos. I enjoyed Metallurgy as a half subject in Part I and this led me to the Part II course in Year 3. At the time, all Metallurgy lectures for the full three years were held in the old Chemistry Lecture Theatre with its wooden tiered seating and floors, and an entrance on to Pembroke Street. Coming from Selwyn meant bike rides down Sidgwick Avenue and then stacking the bikes on the pavement up against the lecture-theatre wall and hoping they would still be there on return!
But Alan’s style was extraordinary and unique. His first courses were on chemical metallurgy, on plasticity, and on dislocations and cracks. Listening to him, the lecture content seemed ‘crystal clear’ and straightforward – easy to comprehend. Always starting lectures on time, he spoke usually without notes and invariably kept to the right-hand side of the lecture platform and desk, unless writing equations on the blackboard. There was no pacing. The scientific arguments developed throughout all his presentations seemed almost self-evident and very logical. In part this was because he had a slower speech delivery compared to colleagues, and so note taking and a grasp of what he was saying did not compete! However a distinct problem for all of us was remembering Alan’s brilliantly developed arguments a few days or months later, because we tended to miss important pieces of logic in our longhand note taking! In lectures Alan occasionally referred to his first two books (Dislocations and Plastic Flow of Crystals and Theoretical Structural Metallurgy) but few of his undergraduate audience understood the international impact of these early publications, or indeed had the time to refer and revise from the book pages. Most of us concentrated on trying to memorise our notes from his lectures. Only later did those of us who stayed in Metallurgy begin to appreciate the excellence of his lecture presentations and the uniqueness of the content. He gave all who had the privilege of listening a wonderful grounding in theoretical metallurgy and in mechanical properties of metals.
Bridging Department and College Brian Ralph (1958)
I
came up to Cambridge as a first-year Natural Scientist in 1958, the same year that Alan Cottrell left Harwell to become the Head of the then Department of Metallurgy. In my second year, I decided to take the Metallurgy course, having heard exceptionally good reports of it, which were totally justified. In that course, Alan taught extractive metallurgy, although we all knew him as an expert physical metallurgist, mainly specialising in defects. I decided to take Part II Metallurgy and then stayed on to read for a PhD, in the field-ion microscopy group, led by David Brandon with Mike Southon and Mike Wald as students already in place. I had to be very careful because Mike Wald was red/green colourblind and Mike Southon had a cavalier attitude to high voltage! One year later, Srinivasa Ranganathan joined the team. Towards the end of my second year as a research student, David Brandon left for Switzerland and then Israel, with the result that Alan Cottrell became my research supervisor. The main problem then was getting past his secretary for advice! Around Easter in my third year, Alan approached me and told me that he had appointed my external examiner and set the date for my oral six weeks hence. He also said that the examiner should have my thesis on his desk in three weeks. Panic set in! I had written
a few papers but expected to have some months in which to complete my studies. Those were the days before computer word processing but with the help of Anne, my wife (who was working full time), we managed to make the deadline. Immediately after passing my PhD, I was put on the staff to co-supervise the field-ion group and begin the move towards a materials science department with an emphasis on the Crystalline State in the firstyear undergraduate course. Alan then left Cambridge for some years in Whitehall but retained a home with Jean, in Cambridge. In 1973, Sir Denys Page retired as Master of Jesus College where I was then a Fellow. I persuaded the Fellowship that Alan would make an excellent Master and so he proved. I have the warmest possible memories of Alan, with whom I kept in close touch until the end. He was a superb teacher, an absolutely outstanding researcher, an extremely competent administrator and a first-rate all-round person.
Master of Jesus and Vice-Chancellor Peter Glazebrook (1967)
A
lan Cottrell was Master of Jesus College for twelve-anda-half years, 1974-86, and Vice-Chancellor (old style) of Cambridge from 1977-79 – the first Master of Jesus to hold that office since 1852, so it was right that his first entry into the College in full vice-chancellarial rig should have been greeted by trumpeters on top of the Gate Tower. Nine years in Whitehall had left Alan frustrated. In Edward Heath’s cabinet there were, he said, only two ministers interested in scientific issues and willing (or able?) to grapple with them: the Prime Minister himself, and the energetic Secretary of State for Education, Margaret Thatcher. The chance to return to Cambridge afforded by the invitation from the Fellows of Jesus was, therefore, welcome both to him and to Jean, whose circle of friends and social life had remained centred here. The Fellows greeted this invitation’s acceptance with both relief and pride at having, for the first time in the College’s history, a scientist of international renown – ‘the very father of modern materials science’ – as their Head. They had been awaiting a new Master before embarking on the changes needed to bring the College into the contemporary world – by opening it to women, drawing a distinction between the working Fellows (with a vote) and the retired, the Emeriti (without it), involving students more fully in the College’s business and government, and reforming its antiquated disciplinary rules and procedures. In sympathy with all these changes, Alan was an exemplary and patient chairman, allowing everyone to have their say, but saying little himself, listening carefully before summarising, tersely but accurately, the sense of the meeting. He resisted a campaign by the women’s colleges and those that had already ‘gone mixed’ to slow the pace of change and, once assured of the soundness of the College’s legal position, he endorsed its successful challenge to the Privy Council Office’s claim to exercise a political, and not merely a judicial, oversight of changes to Oxbridge college statutes. College officers soon came to admire his administrative skills, his quick grasp of the intricacies of College business (he had not been much involved in it when, while Professor of Metallurgy, he had been a Fellow of Christ’s), and his prompt responses to requests for advice, and to be grateful for the understanding support he steadily gave them. He attached great importance to the selection of Research Fellows, and invariably chaired committees concerned with personal matters, whether of students or Fellows. He was, as The Times obituarist said, “a gentle, kindly and eminently reasonable man; it was only personality clashes between highly opinionated dons that he found perplexing”. Alan’s chairmanly and administrative skills were equally admired by those involved in governing the University when, within three years of his return to Cambridge, he accepted appointment as Vice-Chancellor: his tenure marked at the Old Schools by a specially labelled stand for his notably sturdy bicycle. To some it was already clear that the University needed a Vice-Chancellor
Honorary Degrees 1978: Procession from the Senate House entering Jesus College who would provide greater continuity than the traditional twoyear term allowed, and they thought he was the man for the job. The College was consulted and was ready to agree, but in the end, as so often in Cambridge, cautious, some would say reactionary, voices prevailed, and it was to be more than a decade before a change was made. The most lasting result of Alan’s Vice-Chancellorship was, probably, Prince Philip’s thirty years as a particularly active and interested Chancellor of the University. They had soon developed a close rapport: in due course Prince Edward appeared as an undergraduate at Jesus and the Queen twice visited the College, the first sovereign to do so. Relieved to be able to return to his academic work, Alan valued the opportunity and standing the Mastership gave him both to write and to engage in public debates on scientific policy (especially concerning the safety of nuclear energy). He was less attracted to the social and gregarious aspects of the College than was Jean – perhaps because of growing deafness. University and College administration had to be done, and he had shown himself ready to do his full share, but fund-raising had not yet become a major preoccupation of Heads of Colleges. Thinking (and writing) about one’s subject was, he constantly urged, both an academic’s all-important duty and his life-line, and he long practised what he still preached. His Mastership was thus one of steady expansion rather than of major developments in the College. Every bit as proud (if that’s the right word for so modest a man) of having been Master of Jesus as of his great fame as a scientist, he much valued his Honorary and Emeritus Fellowships which enabled him, from his retirement vantage point in Maid’s Causeway, to take a close, but immensely tactful, interest in what was happening in the College and in its members’ achievement, which were frequently acclaimed in hand-written notes. Editorial team John Leake, Rachel Hobson and Lindsay Greer (Dept. of Materials Science & Metallurgy) and John Hughes (Jesus College).
Further information Much additional information about Sir Alan’s life and career is readily available, not least in the many obituaries which appeared earlier this year; links to some of them are listed below. A fascinating interview with Sir Alan was recorded in 2011 as part of a project to build up an oral history archive of eminent scientists. This can be found at: Oral History: sounds.bl.uk/Oral-history/Eminent-scientists/021MC1379X0046XX-0001V0
Alan Cottrell - Timeline 1919
Born, Moseley, Birmingham on 17 July
1935
Moseley Grammar School
1939
BSc in Metallurgy, University of Birmingham
1942
PhD in Metallurgy, University of Birmingham
1943
Lecturer in Metallurgy, University of Birmingham
1944
Married Jean Harber
1948
Theoretical Structural Metallurgy published
1949
Professor of Physical Metallurgy, University of Birmingham
1953
Dislocations and Plastic Flow in Crystals published
1955
Fellow of the Royal Society; Deputy Head, Metallurgy Division, AERE Harwell
1958-1965
Goldsmiths’ Professor and Head of Department of Metallurgy, University of Cambridge
1964
The Mechanical Properties of Matter published
Portrait of Sir Alan Cottrell on becoming Master of Jesus College
The Cottrell Appeal In 2008, with the Earl of Wessex HRH Prince Edward as patron, an appeal was launched to fund a University of Cambridge professorship in Sir Alan’s name. I have the honour of chairing this appeal and I am pleased to report that the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy is working towards formal establishment of the Sir Alan Cottrell Professorship of Materials Science. This will be a fitting recognition of Sir Alan’s contributions to the subject and a lasting legacy in the University. The funds that continue to be raised in Sir Alan’s name will directly support this new Professorship. For updates on progress in establishing the Professorship, please refer to the Cottrell Appeal website: www.msm.cam.ac.uk/alumni/cottrell.php
Sir Graeme Davies FREng
Chair of the Cottrell Appeal
1965-1967
Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser (Studies) , Ministry of Defence; Chief, 1967
1968-1971
Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government
Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy: www.msm.cam.ac.uk/news/photos/obituary-cottrell-by-charles.pdf
1967
An Introduction to Metallurgy published
1971
Knighted
University of Cambridge: http://news.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/2012/03/15/sir-alan-cottrellfrs-17-july-1919-15-february-2012
1971-1974
Chief Scientific Adviser to HM Government
1974-1986
Master of Jesus College, Cambridge
1977-1979
Vice-Chancellor, University of Cambridge
1981
How Safe is Nuclear Energy? published
1986
Returned to work in the Cambridge Department
1988
Introduction to the Modern Theory of Metals published
1996
Copley Medal of the Royal Society
1998
Concepts in the Electron Theory of Alloys published
1999
Lady Jean Cottrell died
2012
Died, Cambridge on 15 February
Obituaries:
Materials World: www.msm.cam.ac.uk/news/photos/obituary-cottrell-by-greer.pdf Guardian: www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/18/sir-alan-cottrell Independent: www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/sir-alan-cottrellgovernments-scientific-adviser-who-worked-to-establish-safenuclear-power-7574489.html The contributors: Prof. Sir Peter Hirsch FRS: Emeritus Isaac Wolfson Professor of Metallurgy, University of Oxford, (Chairman, United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority 1982-1984); Prof. A Kelly CBE, FRS, FREng: formerly Vice-Chancellor, University of Surrey; Prof. DG Brandon: Emeritus Arturo Gruenebaum Professor of Materials Engineering, Technion; Prof. AM Campbell: Emeritus Professor of Electromagnetism, University of Cambridge; Prof. JF Knott, OBE, FRS, FREng: Professor of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham; Dr R Dolby, OBE, FREng: formerly Director, Research & Technology at TWI (The Welding Institute); Prof. B Ralph: formerly Dean of Technology, Brunel University; Mr PR Glazebrook: Emeritus Fellow in Law, Jesus College, Cambridge.