History

      In the early 90’s, Professors Y. Naidich from Kiev (Ukraine), N. Eustathopoulos from Grenoble (France) and R. Sangiorgi from Genova (Italy) undertook the initiative to bring together, for the first time, researchers of the West and East Europe who were successfully working for many years on wetting and capillary phenomena at temperatures as high as those of molten metals, alloys and glasses. That initiative resulted in the first international conference on High Temperature Capillarity (HTC), taken places at Smolenice in Slovakia, in the spring of 1994.

      The success of the first congress and the enthusiasm of participants led to the development of the scientific tradition of HTC Conferences, regularly taking place every 3 years around the globe. The next HTC Conferences took place in Cracow (Poland, summer 1997), in Kurashiki (Japan, autumn 2000), in San Remo (Italy, sprig 2004) and in Alicante (Spain, spring 2007), while the next conference is scheduled in Athens (Greece, spring 2009).

      In San Remo, the tradition of 3 years gap between the Conferences was expanded to 4 years, because 2004 coincided with the 200th anniversary of the famous Young equation, a key equation which defines the field. A special session was dedicated to that special event, opened by Professor P-G. de Gennes (1932-2007), Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1991. The initial 3-years schedule is re-established in the conference in Athens in 2009.

      In 2007, with the occasion of organizing the HTC-2009, the HTC-conferences got their own web-page in the Internet at the address www.htcconference.org.