What Is a Great Materials Moment?

A Great Materials Moment is defined as a pivotal or capstone event of human observation and/or intervention that led to a paradigm shift in humanity's understanding of materials behavior, that introduced a new era of materials utilization, and/or that yielded significant materials-enabled socio-economic changes.

How Was the List Developed?

The list of 100 nominees was arrived upon via a multi-step process conducted by JOM's editorial staff. It began with an inventory of more than 600 candidate moments compiled via a review of the literature and solicitation of input from TMS technical committee members, editorial review boards of peer-reviewed journals that cover materials science and engineering, and other respected members of the materials community.

This list of 600+ was honed to the official nominee list of 100 by the staff of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society working with input from invited members.

The list of 100 official candidates was presented to on-line voters during the closing months of 2006. Voters were asked to create their own individual top ten lists from the pool of candidates. More than 900 voters participated in this somewhat lengthy exercise.

When the polls closed, a first-place vote for a candidate moment was counted as 10 points, a second-place vote was counted as 9 points, and so on until a tenth-place vote for a moment was counted as 1 point. The points accumulated by all of the moments were tallied, and moments were sorted from top to bottom based on the total point values received by each.

For purposes of public presentation, only the moments that rank in the top 50 are displayed. (This allows for consideration of the notion that moments that did not achieve top 50 status may, in fact, not all belong among the top 100. That matter can serve as fodder for debate another day.)