This volume is dedicated to the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Hermann Minkowski¿s paper ¿Raum und Zeit¿ in 1909 [1]. The paper presents the textofthetalkMinkowskigaveatthe80thMeetingoftheGermanNaturalScientists and Physicians in Cologne on September 21, 1908. Minkowski¿s work on the spacetime representation of special relativity had a huge impact on the twentieth century physics, which can be best expressed by merely stating what is undeniable ¿ that modern physics would be impossible wi- out the notion of spacetime. It is suf cient to mention as an example only the fact that general relativity would be impossible without this notion; Einstein succeeded to identifygravitywith the curvatureofspacetime onlywhen he