How many scientists have been paying their scientific attention to brilliancy in natural world?
How will it continue to attract their interests in future?
Structural color is an extremely old and absolutely new research field.
In Hooke's "Micrographia" and Newton's "Opticks", the peacock feather was the one,
which showed the variation of color with changing viewing angle.
They noticed the brilliant color had the similarity with that due to a thin plate.
After the establishment of electromagnetic theory by Maxwell,
the structural color became a stimulating subject in physics.
Lord Rayleigh showed that most of the brilliant colors known in nature were of a structural
origin and came from light interference due to thin-layered structure.
With the development of electron microscope, surprisingly minute and complex structures were discovered,
which stimulated many biologists. They pursued the surveying and classifying study
in enormous creatures using microscopic observations,
and performed the developmental and ecological study.
However, the physical origins and the fundamental principle of
the structural colors were somewhat left behind.
Recently the applications of structural color have been extensively growing
in the painting, automobile, cosmetics and textile industries as materials gentle
to the eyes and safe to the environment.
Thus, the study to survey new mechanisms of the structural colors and to clarify their fundamental principles are urgently needed.
This book is the first one, which offers a worldwide view of the structural colors.
It treats the brilliant world in insects, birds, fish and its industrial applications.
The contributors are selected from a wide variety of fields, who show the activities in the front line, from various fields including physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. I hope this book serves the state-of-the-art activities of the researches in the world.
The publication of this book is supported by the foundation of Sekisui Chemical Co., Ltd.
March 31, 2005
Shuichi KINOSHITA
Osaka University