C S Smith’s development of a viewpoint

Cyril Smith’s distinguished career in industrial metallurgy was wonderfully transformed into his masterful engagement with the history of science and technology. These two phases were bridged by a piece of research that particularly pleased him, as epitomising his general ideas of form and organisation. It was based on his conception of the 2D soap froth as a prototype for metallic grain growth (and much else). He rightly sensed that it would be an enduring source of understanding of some of the complex effects that he so admired in materials.