This issue of the MRS Bulletin is devoted to Earth materials — a subject so broad and with such a long history, stretching back to man's first use of materials, that we can offer only a small sample of topics, only a partial review. As our ancestors fashioned the first crude tools from stone, they must have distinguished among materials on the basis of their physical properties. They classified materials by color and density and very early must have wanted more than Nature had provided. They began to synthesize and fashion their own materials. Today's nanoscale engineering of materials is part of this same quest—a continuous evolution of this early toolmaking.

Thus, Earth materials were the first raw materials—and the first subjects of study and classification in materials science. Probably one of the earliest materials scientists to make quantitative observations was Nicolas Steno (1638–1686, actually Nils Stensen, a Dane by birth), who was among the first to note the “law of constancy of angle” in comments which accompany his drawings of quartz and hematite crystals (De Solido intra Solidum Naturaliter Conteno Dissertationis Prodromus, 1669). Such observations were the first clues to understanding the internal structure of solids. Steno was also a keen geological observer. He is given credit for the first statement of the law of superposition of sedimentary strata. The first quantitative experiments on the origin of minerals grew out of studies of glass and ceramics. French mathematician René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683–1757) tried to determine the composition of Chinese porcelain by melting minerals and rocks.