The Development of Electron Crystallography-in memory of Boris Konstantinovich Vainshtein (1921-1996)

摘要

Since we meet here in the ancient town of Eryx, full of the monumenrt sof ancient and modern religions, we should remember that Archimedes lived in sicily and that his work combined science, mathematical theory, technology and computing. Traditional teaching in schools about the ancient Mediterranean classical traditions, dominated by myths and literature, has completely obscured the technological basis of that civilisation which, in fact, produced such devices as the Anti-Kythera mechanism. This was an astronomical calculator, made in the first century BC, wit soe 30 gear wheels and of a complexity comparable to that of a modern mechanical clock,Probably Archimedes knew about the predecessors of such machines and the himself certainly used mechanical models and diagrams ot discover mathematical results whcih he later proved theoretically. He was killed during the Roman invasion of Syracuse, while too absorbed with his thinking machine, his sand-table, the equivalent of the modern PC.