Table Of ContentA World Scientific Encyclopedia of the Development and
History of Materials Science
Published
Between Nature and Society: Biographies of Materials
edited by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent
Between Making and Knowing: Tools in the History of Materials Research
edited by Joseph D Martin and Cyrus C M Mody
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World Scientific
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A World Scientific Encyclopedia of the Development and History of Materials Science
BETWEEN NATURE AND SOCIETY
Biographies of Materials
Copyright © 2022 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
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About the Contributors
Hervé Arribart has shared his career between academia and industry in
France. He began as a Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
(CNRS) researcher in solid-state physics. He soon moved to Elf Aquitaine
Company where he worked on sensors and instrumentation for medical
diagnosis, in tight collaboration with DuPont. Then, he joined the Saint-
Gobain Company as a research team leader in the field of materials sur-
faces and interfaces. In 1990, he founded the joint CNRS/Saint-Gobain
laboratory, a public–private scientific joint-venture. In parallel, he was
teaching quantum mechanics and solid-state physics at Ecole Polytechnique.
As the scientific director of Saint-Gobain in 2003, he was in charge of the
coordination of research programs, of the management of exploratory
research and academic collaborations. In 2009, he moved back to an aca-
demic position, as a professor in physics and energetic systems at the
Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielle.
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Professor (em) at Paris1 Panthéon-
Sorbonne University (France), is a historian and philosopher of science
and technology. Her research explores technosciences in general, and
materials science in particular. Among her recent publications, she
authored Les Vertiges de la technoscience (2009), Carbone: ses vies, ses
oeuvres. (S. Loeve co-author 2018) and Temps-paysage. Pour une écolo-
gie des crises (2021). She co-edited with Loeve S., Normann A., Schwarz A.
Research Objects in their Technological Setting (2017), and with S. Loeve,
v
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vi Between Nature and Society: Biographies of Materials
X. Guchet French Philosophy of Technology. Classical Readings and
Contemporary Approaches (2018). She is a member of the French
Academy of Technology and recipient of the 2021 Sarton Medal.
Harry Bernas is Research Director (em.) at CNRS and University of
Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France. He has authored some 250 papers on con-
densed matter physics and materials science topics, and held management
positions in the French and European research systems. A long-term inter-
est in societal interactions of science has led him, over a decade, to study
the impact of politics on the aims and practice of science and technology.
Nuclear energy, being emblematic in this regard, is the main focus of his
current work. He can be reached at [email protected].
Soraya Boudia is an STS scholar, Professor at University of Paris. Her
work explores the role of science in politics and policy, particularly the
transnational government of health and environmental risks. She has
edited with N. Jas Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic
World (Berghann, 2014) and Toxicants, Health and Regulations Since
1945 (Pickering and Chatto, 2013). She is co-editor with A. Creager, S.
Frickel, E. Henry, C. Reinhardt, J. Roberts, of Residues: Thinking Through
Chemical Environments (Rutgers University Press, December 2021).
Kate Brown is Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of several prize-
winning histories, including Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities,
and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford, 2013).
Her latest book, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future
(Norton, 2019), translated into nine languages, is a finalist for the 2020
National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pushkin House Award and the
Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.
Hasok Chang is the Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy
of Science at the University of Cambridge. He received his degrees from
Caltech and Stanford, and has taught at University College London. He is
the author of Is Water H O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism (2012) and
2
Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress (2004). He
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About the Contributors vii
is also co-editor (with Catherine Jackson) of An Element of Controversy:
The Life of Chlorine in Science, Medicine, Technology and War (2007), a
collection of original work by undergraduate students at University
College London. He is a co-founder of the Society for Philosophy of
Science in Practice (SPSP) and the Committee for Integrated History and
Philosophy of Science.
Philippe Dillmann is a Research Director at the CNRS, an engineer in
materials science and a specialist in the study of ancient metals. For more
than 20 years he has been conducting research in archaeological sciences
aimed at understanding the techniques and know-how for the production
of metals, their modes of exchange, their use and reception in ancient
societies. For the Middle Ages, his work focuses on the role of metal in
the construction of the great Gothic monuments. His research also focuses
on the alteration and conservation of metal heritage objects, including the
prediction of the long-term behavior of materials used by contemporary
societies. He received the 2020 silver medal of the CNRS.
Florence Hachez-Leroy, Associate Professor of Modern History at
Artois University and Researcher at the Centre de recherches et d’études
Histoire et société, works on the history of modern industrial materials
with a focus on the economic, technical, social, cultural and heritage
aspects of their entrepreneurial history. Her research addresses the role of
international cartels in the aluminum sector and their impact on the mar-
ket. She is currently PI of a national research program called “Aluminum,
Architecture and Heritage, 20–21st century” (Archipal), 2019–2023. Her
most recent book, Menaces sur l’alimentation (2019), focuses on environ-
mental history, particularly the regulation of food additives and their rela-
tion to public health, in Europe and the United States.
Stephen L. Harp is a distinguished Professor of History at the
University of Akron. He is the author of Learning to Be Loyal: Primary
Schooling as Nation Building in Alsace and Lorraine, 1850–1940
(Northern Illinois University Press, 1998); Marketing Michelin:
Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century France (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2001); Au Naturel: Naturism, Nudism, and
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viii Between Nature and Society: Biographies of Materials
Tourism in Twentieth-Century France (Louisiana State University Press,
2014); A World History of Rubber: Empire, Industry, and the Everyday
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2016); and The Riviera, Exposed: An Ecohistory of
Postwar Tourism and North African Labor (Cornell University Press,
forthcoming in 2022).
Emmanuel Henry is a Professor of Sociology at Université Paris-
Dauphine, PSL University in France and a former member of the
School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton,
New Jersey. He is currently working on the links between scientific
knowledge, ignorance, expertise and public policy, in the fields of envi-
ronmental and occupational health. He is the author of Amiante: Un
scandale improbable [Asbestos: an Unlikely Scandal] (Presses univer-
sitaires de Rennes, 2007); Ignorance scientifique et inaction publique
[Scientific Ignorance and Public Inaction] (Presses de Sciences Po,
2017) and more recently La fabrique des non-problèmes [The
Construction of Non-Problems] (Presses de Sciences Po, 2021).
Eric Le Bourhis is Professor in the Physics Department at Poitiers
University (France). He gained his PhD at Paris VII University in 1994,
then joined Saint Gobain R&D as an engineer where he developed exper-
tise in glass surfaces and coatings. He joined Poitiers University in 1998,
where he has pursued an activity to promote coatings in close collabora-
tion with glass industrial manufacturers. He covered both aspects of glass
science and technology in a book published recently (Glass Mechanics
and Technology, Wiley VCH, 2014).
Sacha Loeve is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Science and
Technology at the University Lyon 3 Jean Moulin and member of the
Lyon Institute of Research in Philosophy (IRPhiL). He received his
degrees from Paris Nanterre University. He is interested in the practices,
narratives and knowledge of various technoscientific objects from molec-
ular machines to nanocarbons and biomaterials, which he studies in the
field to draw a different portrait of our contemporary material culture. He
has co-edited Research Objects in their Technological Setting (Routledge,
2017), French Philosophy of Technology (Springer, 2018) and co-authored
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About the Contributors ix
a biography of carbon (Carbone. Ses vies, ses oeuvres, Le Seuil, 2018)
with Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent.
M. Grant Norton is Dean of the Honors College and Professor of
Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Washington State University.
Norton obtained his PhD in Materials from Imperial College and was a
postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. He has held visiting appoint-
ments at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Oxford University, the Chien-
Shiung Wu Honors College at Southeast University and as a Global
Faculty Fellow at Tecnológico de Monterrey.
Judith Rainhorn is a Professor in Modern History at University Paris 1
Panthéon-Sorbonne and a Senior Researcher at the Maison Française in
Oxford. Her research interests include the history of medicine and health,
environmental and labor history in France, Europe and the United States,
19th–20th c., on which she has published extensively. Her most recent
book, Blanc de plomb. Histoire d’un poison legal (Presses de Sciences Po,
2019) was awarded the 2020 François-Bourdon Academy Prize, the 2020
Prescrire Prize and the special mention of the OCIRP-Francis Blanchard-
ILO 2020 prize. In 2020, Judith received the Fondation des Sciences
Sociales Award for excellence in research.
Pierre Teissier is Associate Professor in Epistemology, History of
Science and Technology at the University of Nantes (France). His research
interests are linked to the history of materials sciences, especially solid-
state chemistry, and to the history of energy in the modern period. His
current research deals with the problem of energy storage in Western
Europe and Northern America from the 1870s onward.
Frédéric Thibault-Starzyk is Directeur de Recherche in the French
National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He is a chemist, working
in (operando) spectroscopy in catalysis. He designed experimental meth-
ods for understanding surface chemistry for a new energy efficient and
sustainable chemistry. After a fellowship in Churchill College Cambridge,
Fred Thibault-Starzyk became the director of the Catalysis and
Spectrochemistry laboratory in Caen (2011–2016) and of the Maison
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