Department of Materials, University of Oxford

The Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, England was founded in the 1950s as the Department of Metallurgy, by William Hume-Rothery, who was a reader in Oxford's Department of Inorganic Chemistry.The Isaac Wolfson Chair in Metallurgy was set up in the late 1950s and remains one of the most important professorships in British materials science. Sir Peter Hirsch formerly held the chair. The current holder of the chair is David Pettifor CBE.Other posts in the Department include the Professor in the Physical Examination of Materials, the Cookson Professor of Materials Processing, and the Professor of Nanomaterials. The current holders of these chairs are David Cockayne, Patrick Grant and Andrew Briggs respectively.