Arthur Nowick

Arthur S. Nowick (29 August 1923 – 20 July 2010) was an American materials scientist. He made pioneering contributions to the study of internal friction, anelasticity, crystal defects and other subjects over a fifty-year career and helped develop materials science from a field focused on metals to one that encompasses all classes of materials.

Early career

Nowick was born in Brooklyn, New York, and received his BA degree in Physics in 1943 from Brooklyn College, and MA and PhD degrees in Physics from Columbia University in 1948 and 1950, respectively. During World War II he taught science and engineering in the Army Specialized Training Program at The Johns Hopkins University. He then moved to Cleveland, where between 1944 and 1946 he worked in a program sponsored by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the predecessor to NASA) to create materials that would withstand the heat required for developing jet engines Together with Siegfried Mader, Nowick also developed 'vapor quenching', a technique for producing metastable alloys; the development spurred amorphous ferromagnetism as a field of scientific study.

Later career

In 1966 Nowick returned to Columbia University as Professor of Metallurgy and Materials Science, where he remained until his retirement. Over course of his career he authored more than 200 publications and supervised over 30 PhD students, including MIT professor and materials scientist Harry L. Tuller. He retired from Columbia in 1994, and in 2001 Nowick and his wife moved to California, where he consulted at the University of California at Irvine. He died on 20 July 2010 of heart arrhythmia while swimming, at the age of 86. (1989). He was also the recipient of the David Turnbull Lectureship, which is bestowed by the Materials Research Society in recognition of career contributions to fundamental understanding of the science of materials.