A Commentary on: “Reaction Kinetics in Processes of Nucleation and Growth”*

Excerpt

The years 1937 through 1941 mark an important period in the history of metallurgy. In 1939, William A. Johnson and Robert F. Mehl of Carnegie Institute of Technology presented their work on “Reaction Kinetics in Processes of Nucleation and Growth” at the February meeting of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. The manuscript for this presentation had been submitted some weeks earlier in December 1938 and the article was published in the summer of 1939. Melvin Avrami of Columbia University, who was present at this meeting, published the following series of articles between 1939 and 1941: “Kinetics of Phase Change. I: General Theory,”[1] “Kinetics of Phase Change. II: Transformation–Time Relations for Random Distribution of Nuclei,”[2] and “Granulation, Phase Change and Microstructure: Kinetics of Phase Change. III.”[3] In 1937, Andrei N. Kolmogorov of Moscow University had published his article on “The Statistical Theory of Metal Crystallization.”[4]¹ …