Ali Argon

His experimental and theoretical material science research contributed significantly to the elucidation of the physical processes of plastic deformation and fracture of metals, alloys, ceramics, glass, polymers and composite materials. In 1972 he was a visiting professor of polymer physics at the University of Leeds and in 1992 a visiting scientist with the Humboldt Research Award at Peter Haasen's Institute for Metal Physics at the University of Göttingen. He was also a visiting scientist at Stanford University in 1992.

For the next two years he worked at the High Voltage Engineering Corporation in Burlington, Massachusetts on Van de Graaff particle accelerators for research and medical applications. In 1959 he returned to Turkey to do his military service, also holding a lectureship at the new Middle East Technical University in Ankara. In 1960 he returned to MIT as an assistant professor, becoming professor there in 1968, Quentin Berg Professor in 1982 and Quentin Berg Professor Emeritus in 2001.

Argon, son of M.A. Suphi Argon from a high-ranking Ottoman military and civil service family and Margarethe née Grosche from Berlin, attended school in Turkey. In 1948 he began studying mechanical engineering at Purdue University, gaining a B.S. degree in 1952. This was followed by the S.M. (Scientiae Magister) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1953. At MIT with Egon Orowan, he turned to materials science and engineering and received his D.Sc. doctorate.

Ali Suphi Argon (19 December 1930 – 21 December 2019) was a Turkish-American engineer, and the Quentin Berg Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.