Terence Langdon

Terence G. Langdon, the William E. Leonhard Professor of Engineering in the USC Viterbi School Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, has added another high honor to his long list of distinguished international awards.

He has been awarded the Honorary Medal "De Scientia Et Humanitate Optime Meritis" by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The medal, awarded for “exceptionally meritorious contributions in the area of science and the promotion of humanitarian ideas,” is the highest award that academy bestows.

Earlier this year, Progress in Materials Science, a highly regarded international review journal, named Langdon the “most cited” author in materials science from 2005-2008.

Langdon is a pioneer in the field of processing and understanding the properties of ultra fine-grained and nanostructured materials. Such materials exhibit far greater strength and toughness than some of their coarse-grained counterparts.

He specializes in the phenomenon of superplasticity, a malleable state in metals similar to the softening of glass at high temperatures. Working with his students, Langdon has greatly reduced the time required to shape metal parts using superplastic forming.

Langdon has a long list of honors and accolades, including the 2008 Blaise Pascal Medal for Material Science, given by the European Academy of Sciences (EAS); an invitation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shenyang, China, to deliver the 2009 Lee Hsun Lecture at the Institute of Metal Research; and the 2007 Albert Sauveur Achievement Award from ASM (formerly the American Society for Metals) International.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (U.K.); the European Academy of Sciences; the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); ASM International; The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS); the American Ceramic Society; the World Innovation Foundation; and the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Materials in the United Kingdom. He is also an honorary member of the Japan Institute of Metals.