text: Most fields of studies have a founding father, such as Newton in physics and Lavoisier in chemistry. Materials science on the other hand has no central figure. In the 1940s, wartime collaborations of multiple fields of study to produce technological advances became a structure to the future field of study that would become known as material science and engineering. During the Cold War in the 1950s, US Presidents Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) made materials a priority, when it realized that materials were the limiting factor for advances in space and military technology. In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), referred to as the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) since 1996. In 1960, ARPA encouraged the establishment of interdisciplinary laboratories (IDLs) on university campuses, which would be dedicated to the research of materials, as well as to the education of students on how to conduct materials science research. ARPA offered 4 year IDL contracts to universities, originally to Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University, eventually granting nine more contracts. Although ARPA is no longer in control of the IDL program (the National Science Foundation took over the program in 1972 ), the original establishment of IDLs marked a significant milestone in the United States research and development of materials science. Several institutions departments changed titles from "metallurgy" to "metallurgy and materials science" in the 1960s.