ABSTRACT
The 1960s and 1970s saw many curricular experiments that forced disparate disciplines together. Alas, many of these academic marriages were contrived from the start and dissolved when the funding pipeline or education fashions no longer held them together. But the marriage called surface and colloid science remains happy for its partners from physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering backgrounds. The field has interesting historical roots, noted in this paper and the reinforcement of sustained interest. Demands and support keep coming from both hi-tech and consumer sectors. Instant photography and diet mayonnaise that doesn’t have the texture of a substance that is largely water, are two examples of triumphs at the day-to-day end. Ever more narrowly etched computer chips are examples of the other more sophisticated end. This widespread interest requires the kind of collection advice that Tina Chrzastowski brings. Her colleagues at Illinois have long proved leaders in what has historically been America’s most productive graduate department of Chemistry.
