Diffusive Spreading in Nature, Technology and Society

What the Book Is Dealing With.- Spreading Fundamentals.- Dispersal in Plants and Animals.- Search for Food of Birds, Fish and Insects.- Epicuticular Wax Formation and Regeneration-A Remarkable Diffusion Phenomenon for Maintaining Surface Integrity and Functionality in Plant Surfaces.- Brain Interstitial Structure Revealed Through Diffusive Spread of Molecules.- Turbulent Diffusion in the Atmosphere.- Hot Brownian Motion.- On Phase Transitions in Biased Diffusion of Interacting Particles.

Armin Bunde studied Physics at the universities in Giessen and Stuttgart (PhD 1974). After postdoc periods in Saarbrücken, Antwerp, and Konstanz he was awarded a Heisenberg fellowship in 1983. In 1984 he received the Carl-Wagner prize.  After extended research stays in Boston, Paris, and Ramat-Gan he became professor for Theoretical Physics at Hamburg University in 1987 and full chair of Theoretical  Physics  at Giessen University in 1993. His research activities have been dedicated to many facets of  interdisciplinary research, including diffusion in disordered materials, long-range correlations in nature, extremes in financial markets, and climate variability, and he co-authored several books on these topics.
Jürgen Caro graduated in Chemistry at Leipzig University (PhD 1977, supervised by Jörg Kärger, Habilitation 1992). After PhD he joined the Academy of Sciences of GDR in Berlin-Adlershof. In 2001 he became professor of PhysicalChemistry at Leibniz University Hannover working in porous materials as membrane, catalyst and adsorbent. He is author of about 400 publications and 43 patents. In 2013 he got together with M. Tsapatsis the Donald W. Breck Award, in the same year the Ostwald Medal of the Saxon Academy of Sciences and in 2020 the Eni Award for "Advanced Environmental Solutions" together with J. Kärger. In 2016 Caro became Corresponding Member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences.

Christian Chmelik graduated in Physics at Leipzig University (PhD 2008, supervised by Jörg Kärger). As part of his dissertation, he established IR micro-imaging as a new method for diffusion measurement in nanoporous materials. As postdoc he continued to chair the development of microimaging methods for diffusion measurements. He is an editor of the online journal ''Diffusion Fundamentals'' and chaired the eponymous conference in 2009 (Athens) and in 2015 (Dresden). Since 2014 he is member of the structure-related commission "Spreading in