Hume-rothery and calphad thermodynamics

Hume-Rothery's book entitled "Atomic Theory for Students of Metallurgy" was an advanced text that introduced modern quantum mechanics to us as undergraduates in the early 50's. In 1966 1 had the opportunity to spend a week in Geneva at the Battelle Conference on "Phase Stability in Metals and Alloys" with H-R,Brewer, Zener, Friedel, and Kubaschewski. Hume-Rothery invited me to review the subject for Volume 14 (1969) of Progress in Materials Science (PMS) which he edited. We had a 30-month discussion by mail covering many aspects of the Geneva Conference, and my PMS paper until his death in September 1968. Kubaschewski's Brunei and Sheffield Conferences in July 1971 and the Munster Conference in 1972 set the stage for the birth of the "CALPHAD Method", Journal and annual conferences that continue today. At the 2001 TMS Annual meeting in New Orleans, LA, the symposium on "Computational Thermodynamics and Materials Design" illustrated many cases where "CALPHAD Thermodynamics" affording the broadest description of the stable, metastable and unstable phases over wide ranges of composition, temperature and pressure could be used in the description of commercially useful materials and processes. The present discussion will make the connection between H-R's seminal work, the basis adopted for the predictive CALPHAD method and practical applications of the science of "Alloy Thermodynamics".