Are there good problems for solid‐state physicists in metallurgy? I believe so, both from the physicist's and the metallurgist's point of view. On the one hand are the important unresolved scientific questions, and on the other are industry's needs for special materials. A brief survey of the ways physicists can help those who study the uses of metals will show an underlying theme. Metallurgists need theories that can help them generalize from diverse experimental data without depending on detailed quantum‐mechanical models; they need phenomenological theories.