%0 Journal Article %T The dawn of non-Hermitian optics %J - %D 2019 %R https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-019-0130-z %X Recent years have seen a tremendous progress in the theory and experimental implementations of non-Hermitian photonics, including all-lossy optical systems as well as parity-time symmetric systems consisting of both optical loss and gain. This progress has led to a host of new intriguing results in the physics of light¨Cmatter interactions with promising potential applications in optical sciences and engineering. In this comment, we present a brief perspective on the developments in this field and discuss possible future research directions that can benefit from the notion of non-Hermitian engineering %U https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-019-0130-z