The role of physicists in materials

Speed is characteristic of our age. Speed is important not only to our lives and to our spaceships, but to our ability to bring to social use the important, significant discoveries of science. Physics and the physicist must not only play the traditional role of discovering the secrets of nature, but must increasingly, with all other men, appreciate sooner the requirements, characteristics, and limitations of the application of this discovery to modern living. In no area is the need for speed so clear and important as in the development and improvement of materials upon which our industrial economy is based and on which the defense technology depends. A look at materials development might, therefore, illustrate the vital significance of the physicist in this new accelerating world.