Draft:Diffusion Fundamentals

Diffusion Fundamentals is the name of a series of conferences dealing with phenomena of diffusion (in the sense of spreading) in nature, technology, and society. The topic of the conferences is so broad that, in addition to problems of classic physical diffusion, the spread of diseases or the spread of language peculiarities are also discussed by the principles of classic diffusion. The conferences are accompanied by an open-access scientific journal of the same name. Both are under the auspices of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, supported by Leipzig University.

History
The impetus for the establishment of the Diffusion Fundamentals Conference Series and Online Journal came from a workshop organized in 1996 at Leipzig University with the support of the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation jointly with the German Physical Society in reunified Germany under the leadership of the physicists Reinhold Haberlandt and Jörg Kärger (both Leipzig) and Paul Heitjans (Hannover). Two textbooks, Diffusion in Condensed Matter and Diffusion in Condensed Matter: Methods, Materials, Models resulted from this workshop which, half a century after the publication of Wilhelm Jost's classic Diffusion in Solids, Liquids, Gases, gave an overview of the current state of knowledge in diffusion research. As well, during the workshop, there arose the interest in considering diffusion (or, more generally, spreading) phenomena in their broadest (truly transdisciplinary) sense, as they can be observed in "nature, technology and society", and to dedicate to it a conference series, accompanied by a free-accessible online journal.

To commemorate the pioneering work on diffusion by Adolf Fick in 1855 and by Albert Einstein in 1905, both published in Leipzig, the first meeting in the Diffusion Fundamentals conference series was held in Leipzig in 2005, which also saw the publication of the first volume of the Diffusion Fundamentals online journal. As a rule, two volumes per year of the online journal were subsequently published. The biennial Diffusion Fundamentals conference was held outside Europe for the first time in 2011, at its fourth meeting in Troy, New York, United States, and for the first time in Asia at its tenth meeting in 2023, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

A special highlight in the series was the 6th meeting in 2015 in Dresden, when the Saxon Academy of Sciences took over the patronage and the book on Diffusive Spreading in Nature, Technology and Society resulting from this meeting was awarded the Literature Prize of the Chemical Industry Fund in 2019.

Conference cities

 * I. 2005 Leipzig, 🇩🇪
 * II. 2007 L'Aquila, 🇮🇹
 * III. 2009 Athen, 🇬🇷
 * IV. 2011 Troy, NY, 🇺🇸
 * V. 2013 Leipzig, 🇩🇪
 * VI. 2015 Dresden, 🇩🇪
 * VII. 2017 Moskau, 🇷🇺
 * VIII. 2019 Erlangen, 🇩🇪
 * IX. 2022 Krakau, 🇵🇱
 * X. 2023 Tashkent, 🇺🇿
 * XI. 2025 Evanston, IL, 🇺🇸