Materials - a brief history

Professor Manuel Amaral Fortes has contributed to many aspects of the science of materials. Among them, his greatest love was for a material with a history longer than that of almost any other: cork. Despite its antiquity - Horace (27 BC, [1]), Pliny (AD 77, [2]) and Plutarch (AD100, [3]) document its use over 2000 years ago - it was, until the studies by Fortes and his co-workers [4-6], a neglected material, little studied. His work, elegantly compiled in the text Cortica [7] has redressed the balance, giving cork its rightful place in the history of materials. This history is the subject of this short article, which the author would like to dedicate to the rich memory of Professor Fortes.