The beginnings of surface diffusion studies

Studies of surface diffusion on solids, from its discovery by Hamburger in 1918 and later by Volmer and colleagues, to the first quantitative diffusion measurements, by Langmuir and Taylor and later, are briefly reviewed, together with work done in the first few years after World War 2. The aim is to trace how the field developed in its early stages. After its discovery, surface diffusion was accepted rapidly by the scientific community, but significant quantitative measurements under good vacuum conditions took a long time to achieve. It was only after the period covered here that quantitative diffusivity measurements and studies on single atom diffusion over surfaces were finally accomplished.