The materials sciences part was later addition. I think it was originally a kind of stupid thing from a family member who liked pet projects, but it stumbled across something--will decide what--that made it worth keeping. So it's a much smaller part of what they actually do.
Cutting edge these days, now that it's proved lucrative, but in the latter 20th century it was originally a bit of a toy. Reasonable?

Old, respected family. Starts having financial troubles in the mid/late 1800s, one young man decides "screw this I will go into some manufacturing/investing if it means restoring the family wealth--not 'done' but hell with that, I want our money"
goes into steel. Turns into something of a Carnegie situation, with selling the company when he's kind of satisfied with Having Wealth.
Has a kid who decides "sure, but we've got all this money, we can put it into doing new and interesting things and make even more money while doing it."
This results in the engines/machines-thing that will turn into aerospace stuff (not!Boeing that Dr. Ward worked for, actually).
circa 1950 the next head-of-family is born.
He was the geek, liked shiny new toys, took the risks. Met a lovely girl who was not Old Money, through her brother (a friend of his) who was the computer guy but not a business guy. He pissed off the family by taking the risk on it, but he was right (because he actually was freaking smart)
  (and he married her, they were pissed and had a whole "got to his money to fund that thing through him" thing going, but... heh. I think he was smug at them for forever)
Which is how they ended up with both computerstuff and the original stuff, and then his daughter expands on the material science thing because she finds it shiny (she learned that through her dad).