재료공학의 태동과 미국의 사회변화: 장기 1960년대의 학제적 연구

The discipline of materials science and engineering emerged in response to the perceived “materials bottleneck” during the high Cold War era of the late 1950s. After the Sputnik shock of 1957, U.S. policymakers aimed to foster interdisciplinary materials research in order to ensure the continued development of advanced materials for their high-tech arsenal and the stable supply of skilled manpower for the expanding military-industrial complex. The result was a series of interdisciplinary materials research centers at leading universities across the nation. Within the context of the Vietnam War and its aftermath, interdisciplinary research was appropriated as a solution to the “social relevance” agenda in the late 1960s. The new community of the “interdisciplinary discipline” was fully aware of the rapid social change during the long 1960s. When the scientists and engineers in the new field of materials science and engineering established a professional society for their burgeoning community in the early 1970s, they placed interdisciplinarity at the heart of their identity. The Materials Research Society, which thrives to this day, was constructed upon the principle of interdisciplinary research aiming to solve relevant social problems of the day. This paper argues that the emergence and transformation of materials science and engineering reflect the social change in the U.S. during the long 1960s.