ALD history and prof. emeritus Markus Pessa (updated)

TEK-lehti wrote on Jan 30, 2017 an excellent article about the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), mentioning the very special Finnish researcher and inventor, prof. emeritus Markus Pessa who is also the founder and former leader of ORC. Pessa has also influenced the understanding of the history of atomic layer deposition (ALD) within the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). The TEK-lehti article inspired me to write in the ALD History Blog also of Pessa's influence.

Many ALD researchers will recognise M. Pessa from early ALD publications. The first scientific article published in Finland on ALD in 1980 (Ahonen et al.) is co-authored by Pessa, and so is the review article in Journal of Applied Physics in 1986, which has been chosen to define the end year of VPHA. Both articles were featured and described in the recommended reading list of early ALD publications in the VPHA JVSTA focused review, http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4971389 (open access).

Pessa has been further related to two puzzling questions which I have encountered during VPHA.  I believe that both questions have received decent answers.

1. When I started to work at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in 2004, I soon learned from a colleague who had worked at TUT that there is (/was?) an old ALD reactor displayed labelled as "the world's first ALE reactor". When I first heard this, I admit that I was very surprised. How could this be true? ALE was invented in Espoo by Suntola, after all.    
2. I have - of course - been curious of when the Finnish and Soviet ALD scientists first met. When during the past few years I presented the question to several long-term scientists in Finland who were active already in 1990, I got always basically the same answer: the first meeting was at the ALE-1 conference in 1990 in Helsinki, where these researchers "just appeared". How come they "just appeared" there?!? How did they find their way to the conference?  

Copy of the cover of book of programme and abstracts, ALE-1 conference, Espoo/Helsinki, Finland, June 13-15, 1990. 

Suntola's English Wikipedia page is updated

Tuomo Suntola must be one of the greatest Finnish scientists, inventors, industrialists of all times. I am happy to share that Tuomo Suntola's Wikipedia page in English has been updated related to VPHA Publication Plan Item #11 with the most important turns of Suntola's career. This his how in Wikipedia the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuomo_Suntola, "Training and Career", reads at the moment:

"In 1971, Tuomo Suntola earned his PhD in semiconductor physics from the Helsinki University of Technology. After completing his PhD, Suntola made his first industrial development while working at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, a thin film humidity sensor “Humicap” for Vaisala Oy, a Finnish company specialized in meteorological instruments.