A particular crystal structure of iron and steel that forms at high temperatures, named after a pioneering metallurgist.
Named after Sir William Chandler Roberts-Austen, a 19th-century British metallurgist who made important discoveries about steel structure. The suffix -ite indicates it's a mineral or crystalline form.
Steel's properties are all about which crystal structure it has—austenite is the 'hot' version that exists only at high temperatures, and when cooled it transforms into other structures like martensite!
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