Abstract

The education problem in optics and photonics is to draw young generation on the side of light, optical science and technology. The main goal is to prove the slogan that “physics is a small part of optics”: during the thousand years optics formulated the clear worldview for humanity. In fact optics is itself presents multidisciplinary collection of independent scientific arias from one hand and was a generator of new fields of knowledge from the other hand. Optics and photonics are the regions where the fundamental problems of our reality have to be solved. The mentioned functions belonged to optics during the period of civilizations development. This is a basic idea of books serial by S. Stafeev and M. Tomilin “Five Millennium of Optics” including 3 volumes. The first volume devoted to optics prehistory was edit in 2006 in Russian. Its main chapters devoted to relations between Sun and Life, the beginnings of human intelligence, megalithic viewfinders, gnomons and ancient temples orientation, archaic optical materials and elements. It also consist the optical riddles of that period. The volume II is devoted to Greek and Roman antiquity and is in the process of publishing. It consist the chapters on the beginning of optics, mathematical fundaments and applied optics evolution. Volume III would be devoted to Medieval and Renaissance optics history. The materials are used at our university in a course “The Modern Natural Science Conceptions” for students and graduate students. In our paper the possibilities of optics history as effective instrument for education in optics and photonics are discussed.

© 2009 Optical Society of America