Frederick N. Rhines Hall

Honoree

Frederick N. Rhines was an engineering professor at the University of Florida who received the 1972-73 Faculty Academic Advisory Committee UF Teacher/Scholar of the Year Award. Additionally, he received the Champion H. Mathewson Award in 1942 and was the 1979 recipient of the Sorby Award, presented annually in recognition of lifetime achievement in the field of metallurgy. Rhines coined the term "microstructology" in the early 1980's during discussions about the inaptness of words commonly used to describe the study of microstructures of metals and alloys, their quantitative characterization, evolution and properties.

The F. N. Rhines and W. R. Tarr Scholarship Fund was created by Walter R. Tarr in 1986; naming the scholarship, in part, after the department founder Fredrick N. Rhines, who chaired Tarr's doctoral committee. Tarr received all three of his engineering degrees from UF, completing his Ph.D. in 1973. When asked about establishing the scholarship, Tarr said, "I got a great deal out of being here at the department and I wanted to put something back." Tarr hoped that the scholarship would encourage students to go into materials engineering. The F.N. Rhines and W.R. Tarr Scholarship Fund was the first scholarship to be given by a graduate of Florida's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Facility History

Rhines Hall houses the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, in the College of Engineering. It has undergone a $10 million renovation in order to bring the facilities and labs up to date. Unique in its accessibility to industry, the Major Analytical Instrumentation Center (MAIC) was established to offer opportunities for cooperative research focused specifically on corporate problems, with teams of university and industrial scientists working together with state-of-the-art equipment like an atomic surface microscope.