Author Description

In his autobiography, Professor William D. Nix (1936- ) weaves together his family's experiences, and their emphasis on character and personal interactions. These have influenced his life, from humble beginnings in rural California to his rewarding career as a professor of materials science at Stanford University. Above all, this is a story of the wisdom and lessons of his parents, who came to California from Arkansas and Texas in the depths of the Depression, and of his wife, North Dakota native Jean Telford Nix. His earliest recollections tell of King City, California, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and of Paso Robles during the Second World War. With the family's move to the Santa Clara Valley just after the war, Nix grew up in San Jose as the orchards of the Valley of Heart's Delight were giving way to the electronics and aerospace powerhouse of Silicon Valley. He and Jean raised their own family in Sunnyvale. Nix was at the academic center of the local technological revolution, as the first to graduate from San Jose State's Metallurgical Engineering Department and as a graduate student at Stanford. Known for his special qualities as a teacher, as well as a researcher, Nix developed an extensive academic family throughout his long, award-winning career at Stanford. He details his teaching and research, 1962 to present, along with that of colleagues and students, as the modern field of materials science transformed from a focus on metallurgical industries to a handmaiden of aerospace and microelectronics.