Introduction and History of the Solid State and Materials Chemistry DIC subdivision
In 1989, John Bailar Jr. (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), a founding member of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry, wrote an engaging article in the Journal of Chemical Education ( 1989 , vol. 66 (7), pp. 537-545) that traced the history of the Division back to it origins in 1957. Bailar was an early advocate during the creation of the DIC as a spin-off from the Division of Physical Chemistry and he witnessed DIC's growth and expansion into specialized subdivisions. Here is an excerpt from Bailar's J. Chem. Ed. account on the creation of the DIC Solid State Chemistry Subdivision :
“ Encouraged by the success of the Organometallic Subdivision , several solid state chemists (among them, Aaron Wold, Ephraim Banks, and Roland Ward) began to lobby for a subdivision for their area. Their request for such an organization was soon granted and the new subdivision began operation in 1972 with Wold as Chairman. Evidently, the Executive Committee of the Division had learned that a subdivision is no great danger to its parent, for it made no stipulation as to a probationary period. In retrospect, it is clear that such an organization was needed, for within a few months, it enrolled more than 300 persons…..Among these, there is a large proportion of chemists employed in industry so it is agreed by common consent that the chairmanship should be shared as nearly as equally as practical between those in academic work and those in industry.
The first program arranged by the Solid State Subdivision was presented at the New York meeting in the fall of 1972 and the first program of symposia at the following meeting (Dallas, Spring, 1973). The group immediately began an active program, setting up a clearinghouse to help students get summer employment in solid-state work and arranging for a research fellowship, which the Exxon Corporation agreed to finance and which the Subdivision manages. At the request of the Subdivision , in 1981 Gregory McCarthy assembled a list of laboratory experiments and lecture demonstrations dealing with solid state chemistry and suitable for college work. This was distributed widely to schools that requested it. There have also been efforts to introduce more solid state chemistry into the undergraduate curriculum, to stimulate the production of manuals and texts, and to organize a speaker's bureau.”
Our subdivision has been an active part of the DIC for more than 30 years and has been fortunate to have received consistent leadership from a long list of former subdivision Chairs from academia and industry. View List of former Chairs.
In 2003, as subdivision Chair, the Division of Inorganic Chemistry initiated a change in the subdivision's name to “Solid State and Materials Chemistry” to recognize that our membership now reflects a wide array of materials interests beyond traditional solid state chemistry boundaries. In his J. Chem. Ed. article, Bailar notes that our subdivision's membership exceeded 400 people in 1989. By 2005, our subdivision membership had grown to more than 750, thus interest in solid state synthesis, characterization, and materials growth strategies still garners broad interest from the Inorganic Chemistry community!
One of the subdivision's main charges is to administer the competition for the annual ExxonMobil Solid State Chemistry Faculty Fellowship. This award was first given out in 1979 soon after the subdivision's founding. This fellowship recognizes tenure-track faculty early in their careers and is awarded on the basis of their past and current independent contributions and on their potential for future contributions to the synthesis, properties, reactivity, structure, and bonding in solids. A list of previous awardees can be found here.