In science and engineering the study of high pressure examines its effects on materials and the design and construction of devices, such as a diamond anvil cell, which can create high pressure.
Percy Williams Bridgman received a Nobel Prize in 1946 for advancing this area of physics by two magnitudes of pressure (400 MPa to 40 GPa).
The list of founding fathers of this field includes also the names of Harry George Drickamer, Tracy Hall, Francis P. Bundy, Leonid F. Vereschagin [ru], and Sergey M. Stishov [ru].
These two forms of silica were first discovered by high-pressure experimenters, but then found in nature at the site of a meteor impact.
[1] High-pressure experimentation has led to the discovery of the types of minerals which are believed to exist in the deep mantle of the Earth, such as silicate perovskite, which is thought to make up half of the Earth's bulk, and post-perovskite, which occurs at the core-mantle boundary and explains many anomalies inferred for that region.