At the beginning of this opening lecture I would like to present some general comment concerning light. As we well know, light is an element in nature which has very deep interrelations with our life from a biological and psychological point ofview. The detailed studies ofvarious languages and religions show a very large role played by the word "light". In the texts of the Old or New Testaments and Koran one finds many times the word "light" having various meanings. A well known example is: "God divided the light from the darkness" (The Old Testament, Genesis 1.4). In all languages the word "light" has not only a physical or technical meaning, and there exist many expressions having various specific meanings. In English, for instance, there are the physical or technical expressions like tail light, flash light, traffic light,... and many others. On the other hand, there are such expressions as: in the light of, to bring to light, to come to light, men of light and leading, by the light of nature, light in the head, out like a light... (see, for example, The Oxford English Dictionary).

Date Published: 31 October 1994
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 1991, Diffractometry and Scatterometry, (31 October 1994); doi: 10.1117/12.192004

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1991:
Diffractometry and Scatterometry
Maksymilian Pluta; Mariusz Szyjer, Editor(s)