Nuclear Track Detectors for Charged Particles and Neutrons

It was with great emotion that I accepted to be a guest speaker to this memorial section dedicated to my old-time friend, Prof. Radomir Ilić. In addition to being one of the most outstanding scientists in the field of nuclear tracks, Prof. Radomir Ilić has been always highly acclaimed by the scientific community for his enthusiasm, his warm friendship, and his great vitality. Through his successful editorial activities [1-7], Prof. Ilić has proved to be very able to address the field of nuclear tracks to very wide audiences with special regards to young students. It was here in Portorož, that Prof. Radomir Ilić was our host as the organiser of the 21 International Conference on Nuclear Tracks in Solids [4]. All the participants have great memories of this very successful international conference. For all these reasons, the 2006 edition of the International Conference on Nuclear Energy for new Europe, with its wide audience and its venue at Portorž, can be considered as one of the most appropriate forum for the memorial lecture of Prof. Radomir Ilić. The present paper will be dealing with the solid state nuclear track detectors-SSNTDs and their successful applications for the measurements of cosmicrayneutrons and terrestrial radioactivity, namely radon.