Achim Leistner
Australian optician of German origin / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Achim Leistner is an Australian optician of German origin.[1] During his retirement, he was asked to join the Avogadro project to craft a silicon sphere with high smoothness.[2][1]
Achim Leistner | |
---|---|
Known for | Avogadro project |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Optics |
Leistner studied optics at Optik Carl Zeiss in Jena, Germany, and in 1953 qualified as a precision optical craftsman. He moved to Australia in 1957, and worked in CSIRO on optical fabrication methods.[3]
In addition to precision instruments, Leistner uses his hands to feel for irregularities in the roundness of the sphere.[1] The research team has called his extraordinary sense of touch "atomic feeling".[4] As a result the sphere is the roundest man-made object ever. If it were scaled to the size of the Earth, it would have a high point of only 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in) above "sea level".[Note 1]