The larger chemical companies worldwide are in the process of major change from a commodities orientation to “downstream” products. “Value-added products,” “engineered materials,” and “effect chemicals” are terms their leaders are using as they try to explain what is happening to their boards of directors, to their stockholders, to their employees, and to their customers.

As these companies go through their reorganizations a major problem has become apparent — many professional chemists are not intellectually equipped by training and experience to be effective in research and development in the design of those new products, and the “pipeline” which is producing their “new hires” has not responded to the changing emphases needed in undergraduate curricula and graduate research programs in chemistry.

The driving force behind this new orientation is coming to be known as the science of materials or materials science. The longer descriptor, materials science and engineering, better suggests its inherently broad and interdisciplinary nature as well as bringing out that how the final product is produced affects (and may effect) its properties. Because this new discipline moves across standard science and engineering boundaries, materials science does not lend itself to neat classification. Descriptive classification is nevertheless possible:

• Materials science is solid state science, both solid state chemistry and solid state physics.