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FEMMS2009
The Twelfth Frontiers of Electron Microscopy in Materials Science
FEMMS is an international symposium series focused on the application of electron microscopy in the field of materials science. It has been held biennially since 1987. This meeting typically includes over 50 invited speakers, who are the most influential scientists in the field. General contributed papers on state-of-the-arts are also accepted and are presented. FEMMS attracts the best and brightest of the electron microscopy community and affords significant opportunities for students and post docs to meet and have substantive discussions with the leaders in the field.

Dr. Akira Tonomura. 
2009 FEMMS Distinguished Lectureship Award Winner
Fellow of Hitachi Ltd.

Dr. Tonomura is a world renowned pioneer and authority in the field of electron holography. He joined the Central Research Laboratory of Hitachi, Ltd. in 1965, and since then has been engaged in research and development of electron beam physics and its application to electron microscopy for physics.
In the mid-70s, he and his colleagues developed a high-coherence electron microscope equipped with a high-performance field-emission gun. This brought holography electron microscopy into the practical realm, making it possible to observe phase information contained in the transmitted electron beam. Dr. Tonomura then succeeded in verifying experimentally the Aharonov-Bohm effect, taking advantage of electron holography. This achievement ended a long-standing dispute on the existence of vector potential, i.e. the existence of a gauge field. In the 90s, his interest was mainly focused on behavior of magnetic flux lines (vortices) inside superconductors. Using a newly developed 350kV holography electron microscope, his research group succeeded in achieving the first dynamic observations of vortex motion in superconductors. In 2000, his team developed a 1 million volt holography electron microscope realizing a beam brightness of 2x1010Acm-2str-1and lattice resolution of 49.5 pm. This latest HVEM is also now being put to use for the direct observation of unconventional behavior of vortices in high-temperature superconductors. ‘‘The vortices move around like living creatures,’’ he says.

For these scientific achievements, Dr. Tonomura has received a lot of national and international recognitions, e.g., the Nishina Memorial Prize in 1982, the Asahi Prize in 1987, the Japan Academy Prize and Imperial Prize in 1991, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics in 1999 and so on. He was elected as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States of America in 2000 and as a member of the Japan Academy in 2007.