Arquivo F1835 - Queen's University. Department of Materials amd Metallurgical Engineering fonds

The study of metallurgy began at Queen's when the University-affiliated Ontario School of Mining and Agriculture was established in Kingston in 1893. The first professor of the discipline was William Nicol, after whom the Department's building, Nicol Hall, is named. The discipline was taught as part of a combined Mining and Metallurgy program until 1914, when the separate programs of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering and Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering were established. These existed until 1935 when the Department of Metallurgical Engineering was founded as a separate unit within the Faculty of Applied Science. The Department grew steadily in subsequent decades in response to increased demand from manufacturing industries and processors of primary metals for graduates knowledgeable in metallurgy. Since the 1960s, in particular, there has been marked growth in the number of faculty and in the amount and sophistication of research and equipment. The Department was originally concerned almost exclusively with studying the production and use of metals and metal alloys, and this remains an important part of its work, research, and teaching. Since the early 1970s however, it has been increasingly concerned with a variety of other materials, including ceramics, polymers, and composites. Reflecting this trend, the Department was renamed Materials and Metallurgical Engineering in 1990. It expanded into Jackson Hall in 1993, with the establishment of a materials and metallurgy research laboratory. This Department was phased out of the Faculty of Applied Science as an Honours degree in 2001, and is now offered as a Materials Option.