Abstract
Much has happened since the struggle between the devotees of the undulatory and corpuscular theory of light. For millennia we have been fascinated by optical phenomena and the groundbreaking works of many brilliant scientists allowed deep insights into the question of what holds the world together in its inmost folds . Step by step we gain more understanding of what light actually is [1]. In particular, the interaction of light with matter is a treasure trove for new applications and a demanding criterion for the underlying physical theories.
The electron is a theory we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.
Richard Feynman
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Notes
- 1.
Born 11th May 1918 in New York City; †15th February 1988 in Los Angeles, California. Nobel Prize in Physics 1965.
- 2.
For example the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope, the discovery of fullerenes , the development of fluorescence microscopy, etc.
- 3.
As the modern version of the metric system, it is an achievement of the French Revolution and therefore still retains a French name.
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Trügler, A. (2016). Prologue. In: Optical Properties of Metallic Nanoparticles. Springer Series in Materials Science, vol 232. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25074-8_1
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