The International Titanium Association, Eastlake, Colo., announces that Russell Gordon Sherman, a member of ASM International, has been awarded its 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in developing titanium alloys, pioneering the high-volume production of titanium aerospace fasteners, and designing heat treating protocols for the titanium industry. The ITA will formally present the award at the Titanium USA 2018 Conference and Exhibition, October 7-10 in Las Vegas.
Dr. Frauke Hogue, a Fellow of ASM International, lauded Mr. Sherman’s distinguished career in a nomination form for the prestigious award. “The entire titanium industry has benefited from his research into developing a higher-strength titanium (the workhorse Ti-6Al-4V alloy) through the heat treatment of solution treating and aging,” Dr. Hogue wrote.
Mr. Sherman, who worked at Timet during the 1950s, was involved in developing titanium alloys and heat treating protocols to raise the mechanical properties and usability of the “wonder metal” during the formative years of the titanium industry, according to Dr. Hogue. He presented the initial findings from his research at ASM’s convention in Philadelphia in October 1955, in a paper titled, “The Heat Treatability of Ti-6Al-4V.” The backdrop to his research work came during the Cold War years of the 1950s, when the United States and the Soviet Union were vying for supremacy in aerospace.
Later in his career, during the 1960s and into the early 1970s, Mr. Sherman worked in the industrial fastener industry, where he pioneered high-volume production techniques and heat treating of titanium fasteners for the aerospace industry. This was a time when Boeing needed thousands of fasteners for its 747 commercial jet.
“One-at-a-time hot forging could not meet the volume and price demand (for aerospace fasteners),” Dr. Hogue stated. “He made volume production of fasteners possible by working out techniques (for titanium wire) using cold-heading equipment. Working with Egloff & Graper, he made volume heat treating of fasteners possible. This was done by modifying an old AGF ‘Shaker’ hearth furnace to solution-treat fasteners continuously under argon gas protection.”
A resident of Santa Monica, Calif., and still active as a consultant in the titanium industry, Mr. Sherman said he’s most proud of his accomplishments during his early years at Timet. “This was a time when no one knew anything about titanium,” he said during a telephone interview. He affectionately described this period of his career as ‘Titanium 101’, when he and colleagues had to teach themselves about the metal’s properties and its vast potential as a strategic material for military and industrial applications.
Mr. Sherman was born in Baltimore and lived in Norfolk, Va., and Philadelphia. He served in the Army during World War II, in the European Theater, and was again called into active duty during the Korean War. He was honorably discharged from military service in August 1953 and soon after landed a position as a metallurgist with Timet.
