The following article is based on the Von Hippel Award presentation given by Julia
Weertman of Northwestern University on December 3, 2003, at the Materials Research
Society Fall Meeting in Boston.Weertman received the award for “her lifelong exceptional
contributions to understanding the basic deformation processes and failure mechanisms
in a wide class of materials, from nanocrystalline metals to high-temperature structural
alloys, and for her inspiring role as an educator in materials science.” It has been said
that “the best things come in small packages,” and that is certainly in Weertman’s mind in
this presentation. She has spent much of her career “in pursuit of the small.” In this article,
she first looks back at her experiences studying grain-boundary cavities and life in the
spaces between grains. She then fast-forwards to modern work on nanocrystalline
mechanical behavior, confirming that such nanocrystalline materials are indeed strong,
but also brittle. Some of her experiences in studying these phenomena are also described