Preface

On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, it is a great pleasure to honour Manuel Cardona with this Festschrift which contains original articles in the areas of solid- state and surface physics where Manuel has been active. Knowing that it would be very difficult to cover equally all the fields to which Manuel has contributed in the past 40 years, we have invited contributions from those former students, postdoctoral researchers or co-workers who we felt had a close personal relationship with Manuel. We would like to apologize to those who could not be included because of space limitations and to those whose close ties to Manuel we were not aware of. We are very pleased that some of Manuel’s old friends and colleagues have contributed a few personal remarks or memories to this Festschrift. Where possible, we have used these personal notes as an informal introduction to the different scientific parts of this volume. We hope very much that Manuel will enjoy the contributions of his former Ph.D. advisor William Paul, his friends Jan Tauc, Richard Martin and Bernard Weinstein and of Eli Burstein, whom Manuel has just followed as Editor-in-Chief of Solid State Communications.