“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. ” Henri Poincar´ e (1854 - 1912) The ancient Greeks, quite ingeniously, realised that all materials and their (now known as macroscopic) properties, including life itself, are due to a limited number of tiny, constantly moving building blocks and the conn- tions (now called interactions) between these blocks. Receiving both scienti?c and non-scienti?c opposition, the idea faded and, despite some renaissance of atomistic ideas in the 17-19th centuries, it still took more than two thousand years, until the time of Einstein, for the idea of microscopic building blocks to be fully accepted. These ideas, begun during the golden age of physics in the 20thcentury,haveledtoacomprehensiveunderstandingofsuchstatesofm- ter as gases and solids, which in turn have completely revolutionised everyday life in the developed world by introducing technological wonders such as m- ern cars, air tra?c, semiconductor chips for computers and nuclear power. Another state of matter, ?uids, appeared to be much more di?cult to tackle, even in the case of simple liquids like liquid argon, a research favourite in the ?eld. Legend tells that Lev D.
This book provides an interdisciplinary overview of a new and broad class of materials under the unifying name Nanostructured Soft Matter. It covers materials ranging from short amphiphilic molecules to block copolymers, proteins, colloids and their composites, microemulsions and bio-inspired systems such as vesicles. The book considers several fundamental questions, including: how self-assembly of various soft materials with internal structure at the nanoscale can be understood, controlled and in future used in the newly emerging field of soft nanotechnology. The book offers readers a view on the subject from different perspectives, combining modern experimental approaches from physical chemistry and physics with various theoretical techniques from physics, mathematics and the most advanced computer modelling. It is the first book of this sort in the field. All chapters are written by leading international experts, bringing together experience from Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the USA. The book is oriented towards active researchers as well as undergraduate and graduate students.
