The recipient of 2006 Hsun Lee lecture award, Professor Robert O. Ritchie from the University of California at Berkeley, visited the Institute of Metal research (IMR), Chinese Academy of Sciences from 8 to 9 June.

In the morning of 8 June, before his lecture, Professor Ritchie received the plaque of Hsun Lee award from Professor Lu, Director of IMR. His lecture was entitled “Fracture in Human Bone and the Role of Age and Disease”. Professor Ritchie is a worldwide well-known scientist for his works on fracture and fatigue of engineering and biological materials. He introduced his latest works about the properties of human bone and tooth, especially the effect of human age on the toughness of bone and tooth. His slides and explanation presented impressive pictures to the audience. After the lecture, he took a tour around the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science and discussed with Professor J. K. Shang, head of Microelectronic Interconnect Materials Division, and researchers from Materials Fatigue and Fracture Division.

Robert O. Ritchie is Head of Structural Materials and Senior Materials Scientist in the Materials Sciences Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Professor of Materials Science in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. He received a B.A. degree in physics and metallurgy in 1969, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science in 1973, and a Doctor of Science (Sc.D.) in 1990, all from Cambridge University. Following periods as the Goldsmith~s Research Fellow in Cambridge (1972-74) and as a Miller Research Fellow at Berkeley (1974-76), he joined the faculty in Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. He returned to Berkeley where he has been the Director of the Center for Advanced Materials (1987-95) and Deputy Director of the Materials Sciences Division (1990-94) at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

Dr. Ritchie is well known for his research in materials science, fracture mechanics and fatigue-crack propagation, having authored or co-authored over 500 papers and edited 17 books in the technical literature. He has been the recipient of several awards, including the Grossmann Award from ASM in 1980, the Most Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment Award from the Department of Energy in Metallurgy in 1982 and in Ceramics in 1989, the Mathewson Gold Medal from TMS-AIME in 1985, the George R. Irwin Medal from ASTM in 1985, the McGraw Research Award from the ASEE in 1987, and the Rosenhain Medal from the Institute of Materials in 1992, and the Structural Materials Distinguished Materials Scientist/Engineer Award from TMS in 1996; He is a Fellow of ASM and of the Institute of Materials, President (1997-2001) and Honorary Fellow of the International Congress on Fracture, and a chartered engineer in the U.K. He was also named as one of America~s Top 100 Young Scientist by Science Digest magazine in 1984.

His research interests are primarily focused on the mechanistic aspects of the fracture and fatigue of engineering and biological materials, from a fracture mechanics/materials science perspective. Recent studies have been centered on life-prediction in biological materials (minerialized tissue such as dentin and bone) and the prediction of the safe life of medical implant devices. Some recent works were published on high impact journals as Bone, Nature Material, Nature Medicine et al. 

As an old friend of IMR, his memory about old IMR refreshed by IMR’s new face after the visiting.