David Turnbull
David Turnbull was a physical chemist who played a prominent role in the emergence of materials science as a multi-disciplinary field, to which he contributed a comprehensive understanding of the rates of phase transformations in liquids and solids. He was born on February 12, 1915, on a farm in northwestern Illinois that is still owned by his family. He loved the farming life, but an early asthmatic condition made him unfit for some of the work, which led his parents to steer him toward higher education. He got a degree in Chemistry from Monmouth College in Illinois, and went on to the University of Illinois in Urbana, where he got his Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1939. He then joined the Faculty at the Case School of Applied Science where, during World War II, he trained naval cadets and did research on synthetic rubber and on the improvement of additives for heavy-duty...