About the Author David V. Ragone received his S. B., S. M., and Sc.D. degrees in metallurgical engineering from MIT. He taught undergraduate and graduate courses in thermodynamics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1953 to 1962. From 1962 to 1967, as chairman of the materials department and assistant director of the Hopkins laboratory at the General Atomic Division of General Dynamics, he directed research on materials for advanced, high-temperature, gas-cooled nuclear reactors. He then served as Alcoa Professor of Metallurgy at the Carnegie- Mellon University, where he was also A...