Recipient: 1998 Bruce Chalmers Award

The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society's Bruce Chalmers Award was established in 1989 by the Materials Processing & Manufacturing Division of TMS and is named for Bruce Chalmers, widely acknowledged as the father of modern solidification science. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of solidification science.

Robert F. Sekerka

Citation: "For seminal contributions to solidification processing including the development of morphological stability theory, which provides the basis for understanding the evolution of crystal morphology."

Biography: Robert F. Sekerka is a university professor of physics and mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University. He earned his B.S. in physics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1960 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1961 and 1965, respectively. Prior to joining the staff at Carnegie Mellon University in 1969, he served as senior scientist and manager of the Materials Growth and Properties Department for Westinghouse Research Laboratories.

Dr. Sekerka is the author or coauthor of more than 100 technical articles and has been associate editor of Journal of Crystal Growth and Metallurgical Transactions. He has received several honors, including being elected a National Science Foundation fellow and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow of Harvard University.

Quote: "This award is meaningful to me because it indicates that my peers in TMS understand and care about my research and regard it as a meaningful and important contribution to society. By its very nature, basic research, which is what I do, is difficult to connect at the time when it is performed with practical results, which often result 10-15 years later in unanticipated ways. This award assures me that somebody really cares and inspires me to try to do even more and better work in the future."

The information on this page is maintained by Nellie Luther (natale@tms.org).

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