Advanced materials science without advanced tools: The indian experience

Materials science has become instrumentation intensive. Growth of several sub-topics of materials science has been closely related to the developments in scientific instrumentation. This change in the evolution of materials science is illustrated with selected examples. Materials science in several sub-areas has thresholds of instrumentation, below which science of a certain kind is impossible. However, most of the researchers do not have access to cutting edge tools, especially in the developing world. This is manifested in science, examples from the Indian context will be used to illustrate this point. But, advanced materials science has been demonstrated with minimal resources; several recent examples illustrate this. These case studies are expected to help younger scientists perform better using available resources. Although many of the issues presented are common to advanced science of developing counties in general, there are specific issues for relevance to materials science of India.