Materials Science in Ukraine

The outstanding human resources and excellent raw deposit capabilities of Ukraine have led to creating Ukrainian scientific schools back in the days of the Russian Empire, which were comparable to the Ural and another world schools of metallurgists and metal scientists. The further development of science on materials in Ukraine is closely related with establishing the Academy of Sciences in 1918. From the first twelve members of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, three of them namely V.I. Vernadsky, P.A. Tutkovsky and S.P. Tymoshenko, had represented the natural sciences. The election of E.O. Paton to the Academy in 1929 for "technical sciences" specialty had initiated the usage of promising achievements of fundamental sciences for development of applied ones. Since that, the famous Institutes of Ferrous Metallurgy (1936), Metal Ceramics and Special Alloys (1955) and others were founded.

The idea to develop the new area of knowledge, which would combine the different types of interatomic bonding to be resulted in new materials and would not be preferable to metallic materials only, has been already in time, namely in 1963. B.Ye. Paton jointly with I.M. Frantcevych had created the Department of Physical and Technical Problems of Materials Science, which included a few institutes namely: electric welding (Paton Welding Institute, PWI), cermets and special alloys (Institute for Problems of Materials Science (IPMS since 1964), foundry (problems of casting since 1964, and Institute of Physics and Technology Metals and Alloys (PTIMA since 1996), mechanical engineering and automation (Institute of Physics and Mechanics (IPM since 1964). And although the institutions are quite different in their profiles, their uniting direction is materials science. As early as 1963, V.N. Yeremenko was elected as the first academician for the "materials science” specialty.

Therefore, the issue of a new collection of scientific papers under the title "Progress in Materials Science" is natural and vitally required. It is corresponding to global trends in the formation of scientific and technical priorities in developed countries and is as the task for Ukraine too.