The following article is based on the Von Hippel Award presentation given by Julia Weertman of Northwestern University on December 3, 2003, at the Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston.Weertman received the award for “her lifelong exceptional contributions to understanding the basic deformation processes and failure mechanisms in a wide class of materials, from nanocrystalline metals to high-temperature structural alloys, and for her inspiring role as an educator in materials science.” It has been said that “the best things come in small packages,” and that is certainly in Weertman's mind in this presentation.She has spent much of her career “in pursuit of the small.” In this article, she first looks back at her experiences studying grain-boundary cavities and life in the spaces between grains.She then fast-forwards to modern work on nanocrystalline mechanical behavior, confirming that such nanocrystalline materials are indeed strong, but also brittle.Some of her experiences in studying these phenomena are also described.
