Ali S. Argon
Quentin Berg Professor of Mechanical Engineering, EmeritusRoom 1-306
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge MA 02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2217
Email: argon@mit.edu
Research Interests
Strengthening mechanisms in crystal plasticity
Mechanisms of plasticity in amorphous silicon
Mechanisms of plastic resistance and toughness in polymers
Creep resistance of ceramic eutectics
Ultra-hard nano-structured ceramic composite coatings
Biographical Sketch
Ali S. Argon, BS, SM, ScD, D-Eng,h.c. is Quentin Berg Professor Emeritus in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Upon receiving his ScD degree in 1956 he joined the High Voltage Engineering Corp. in Burlington, MA for 2 years where he worked on problems related to Van de Graaf particle accelerators for applications in science and medicine. After military duty in the Turkish Army Ordnance Corps and a lectureship at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, he joined the MIT faculty in 1960 where he has been ever since.
His professional research experience has covered a wide range of materials including metals, ceramics, glasses, polymers and composites – both experimentally as well as through mechanistic computer modeling. His research results have been published in principal technical journals, conference proceedings and books. These publications are in excess of 360 journal articles and include 2 books on the subject of mechanical behavior of engineering solids as well as 3 books edited on related subjects. He has given numerous principal keynote lectures in national and international conferences and symposia in nearly all industrial countries. These include: The University of London Lecture (1979) the K.C.B McDonald Lecture (1985) of the Canadian Metal Physics Society, the Midwest Universities Mechanics Lectures (1985), the TMS/IMM Lecture (1998), and the Southwest Universities Mechanics Lectures (2000).
Argon was the Quentin Berg Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT between 1982 and 2001 when he retired from active service. He was a Visiting Professor of Polymer Physics at the University of Leeds in the UK (1972); was a Visiting Scientist at the Institute for Metal Physics of the University of Gottingen in Germany, on a U.S. Senior Scientist award of the Alexander von Humboldt Society (1992), and was also a visiting Scientist at the Materials Science Department of Stanford University in (1992).
He has been a member of review committees of National Laboratories and University Centers, of a number of technical committees of the NSF, NRC, NMAB and the NAS/NAE, and acted as chairman of several of these. He had been on the Board of Directors of the Society of Engineering Science and on the Board of Governors of the Institute for Mechanics and Materials. He is a member of the APS, TMS, ASM, ASME, MRS.
Argon is the recipient of a number of awards and honors which include membership in the National Academy of Engineering (1989), the Charles Russ Richards award (1976) and the Nadai Medal (1998), both of the ASME, the Staudinger Durrer Medal of the ETH in Zurich (1999), the Heyn Medal of the Deutche Gesellschaft fur Materialkunde (2004), honorary fellowship of the International Conferences on Fracture (1984), fellowship in the American Physical Society (1987), Distinguished Life Membership in Alpha Sigma Mu (International Prof. Soc. Materials & Engng.) (2000). In 2004 he was designated as "outstanding mechanical engineer" by his alma mater, Purdue University. In 2005 he was given an honorary Doctor of Engineering (D-Eng) degree by Purdue University.
