Brent Fultz

Brent Fultz is the Rawn Professor of Materials Science and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 1982. He was a Presidential Young Investigator, a recipient of an IBM Faculty Development Award, a Jacob Wallenberg Scholarship. He won the TMS EMPMD Distinguished Scientist Award in 2010, and the 2016 William Hume-Rothery Award of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS). Fultz is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), TMS, and the Neutron Scattering Society of America (NSSA). He served on review boards of several national labs and private companies. Fultz has authored or co-authored 400 publications, and has mentored 43 Ph.D. theses at Caltech. Working with students is his favorite part of his job at Caltech. Teaching motivated the writing of the two textbooks described below. _____________________________________________________________ Soon after I arrived at Caltech in 1985, I started teaching a course on "Transmission Electron Microscopy and Diffractometry of Materials". The course notes evolved into a textbook, co-authored with Jim Howe. We see this book as a way for graduate students to quickly reach the level of understanding needed in standard methods of materials characterization. It is also a springboard for moving into topics beyond the scope of the book. The book was never intended as a manual for operating a TEM. It focuses on concise explanations of concepts that unify diffraction, scattering, and microscopy. It takes work to read this book and more work to do the problems. Don't expect it to be easy, but over four editions we have worked to make it clear. The book is now translated into Russian, and a Chinese translation is underway. More about this book is here: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~matsci/btf/TEM_Book.html In the mid-2000's I began to teach the third term of a graduate sequence covering thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and phase transitions. This course, "States of Matter", loosely followed the classic book by David Goodstein of the same name. The content that I covered in the third term evolved towards materials science, but with a viewpoint at the level of the atoms and electrons. At this level, using statistical mechanics, it is possible to understand the origins of the energy and entropy functions of thermodynamics. Although many details require modern computer calculations not suitable for a graduate textbook, the explanations in "Phase Transitions in Materials" are given as basic models that summarize the key issues. The traditional topics in a materials science course on "phase transformations" are covered with this new approach, and the book points out paths into more advanced topics. More about this book is here: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~matsci/btf/PTM_Book.html Both textbooks have online solutions manuals that are available to instructors. Please email me to ask for access. Unfortunately I cannot grant access to students, because some faculty use the problems for exams.