Institute of Metals/Robert Franklin Mehl Award

This award recognizes an outstanding scientific leader by inviting him/her to present a lecture at the Society's Annual Meeting on a technical subject of particular interest to members in the materials science and application of metals program areas.

Recipients will be invited to submit their lecture to one of the Metallurgical and Materials Transactions journals. The Mehl Award consists of the Mehl Medal and an engraved plate in a walnut plaque. Travel assistance in the amount of $500 will be offered to both foreign and United States award recipients at the time of notification of their selection. Award recipients must travel to and attend the conference in order to receive the travel funds associated with this award. Originally known as the IOM Lecture, the award was established by the Institute of Metals Division of AIME, a precursor to The Metallurgical Society that eventually became TMS. In 1972, the TMS Board of Directors approved the creation of a new award, the Robert Franklin Mehl Award, and its addition to the existing IOM Lecture. Today’s combined IOM/Mehl Award is considered a pinnacle award.

A deserving namesake for this pinnacle award, Robert Franklin Mehl (1898–1976) was instrumental in transforming the fields of metallurgy and materials science and engineering into the fields we know today through his own research, his advocacy for a more fundamental approach to materials, and his reshaping of the educational curriculum for metallurgists.

Mehl spent much of his career as professor of metallurgy, director of the Materials Research Laboratory, and head of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering at Carnegie Institute of Technology (CIT; now Carnegie Mellon University). Prior to his time at CIT, Mehl served as the first head of the Division of Physical Metallurgy at the then recently established U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

As a member of AIME, Mehl received the AIME Champion H. Mathewson Award in 1934, 1939, and 1944; the 1936 IOM Lecture Award; and the 1945 AIME James Douglas Gold Medal. In 1963, he was selected as a member of the first class of what is now the TMS Fellows. He also played an important role in establishing Brazilian Metallurgical Society (now Associação Brasileira de Metalurgia, Materiais e Mineração, ABM) during a year spent at the Universidade de São Paulo. For the 70th anniversary of ABM in 2014, the Robert Mehl Symposium was held during the TMS-ABM Pan-American Materials Conference to recognize Mehl’s influence on the evolution of materials science and engineering throughout the world.

For more information on this award, view the bylaws.

Criteria

How to Nominate

Please submit the following documents to complete the nomination process:

1. Completed nomination form.
2. Nominator's Supporting Statement: This statement is to be included within the principal nominator’s cover letter of endorsement. The supporting statement should outline the qualifications of the nominee for the specific honor/award. The nominator’s supporting letter should be no more than two pages.
3. Current resume or curriculum vitae, no more than 5 pages.
4. Two to five letters of endorsement are required. Each letter should be no longer than one page. No more than one letter of endorsement may be from the same affiliation as the nominee. The nominator’s letter may be counted in the total number required.

Send complete nomination packet to TMS Awards.