The changing character of the IAU General Assemblies becomes most clear from a comparison of the agenda of the Brighton meeting with that of one of the earlier meetings.
After the same pattern as the XIII th General Assembly of the International Astronom- ical Union the present Volume of the Highlights in Astronomy contains the texts of the invited discourses given at the XIVth General Assembly held in Brighton, England, August 1970.
When the Executive Committee of the International Astronomical Union asked me, in 1968, to organize a Symposium on White Dwarfs it became evident that members of at least four Commissions of the IAU should participate, and that the most oppor- tune place, and time to hold such a Symposium would be somewhere in the British Isles and just preceding the Fourteenth General Assembly at Brighton in August, 1970.
The present volume contains papers presented during the Advanced Study Institute on the 'Structure and Evolution of the Galaxy' held under the auspices of the Science Committee, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Lagonissi near Athens, Greece between 8-19 September 1969.
The publication in English of this monograph seems to me to indicate the ever- increasing interest of astrophysicists in the physical and dynamical problems of planetary nebulae-one of the most interesting and fruitful branches of theoretical astrophysics.
The proposal to organize a Symposium on circumstellar matter and extended atmo- spheres in binary systems was first made by the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory to the Executive Committee of the International Astronomical Union in the summer of 1969.
This volume contains the fifteenth tri-annual reports of the Presidents of the forty Commissions of the International Astronomical Union; it refers to the progress in our discipline during the three years 1970, 1971 and 1972.
We have in this volume, compiled a connected account of the proceedings of the Symposium on Wolf-Rayet and High-Temperature Stars held at Buenos Aires.
'Galactic Radio Astronomy' was chosen as the subject of this Symposium, which was held in conjunction with the IAU General Assembly that took place in Sydney in August 1973, largely because it is a very suitable Southern Hemisphere topic.
This publication, in two volumes, includes most of the scientific papers presented at the first meeting of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL), held on June 25-28, 1973 in Barcelona, Spain.
This book contains the lectures presented at the Summer Advanced Study Institute, 'Earth's Particles and Fields' which was held at the University of Sheffield, England, during the period August 13-24, 1973.
This conference is a tribute to those astronomers who pioneered the investigation of this subject such a short time ago and who carried it through to its present state.
In recent years it has become apparent that con- tributions to our knowledge about the interstellar medium are made by practically all forms of astronomy ranging from radio- to gamma ray observations, and from cosmic ray measurements.
The aim of the present book has been to provide an outline - the first of its kin- of the history of the human efforts to map the topography of the surface of our satellite, from the days of pre-telescopic astronomy up to the present.
This book contains a set of articles based on a session of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in San Francisco in February, 1974.
This volume contains a series of lectures delivered at the 2nd course of the International School of Astrophysics at the "e;Ettore Majorana"e; Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice (Sicily) from June 22 to July 9, 1974.
by the completion of large aperture synthesis radio telescopes, which have permitted a detailed mapping of radio sources, and by the development of very long base-line interferometry (VLBI), with 4 3 resolutions down to 10- - 10- arc sec, which for the first time has rendered possible radio investigations of the structures of the very compact radio sources found in galactic nuclei and quasars.
Nine years ago, in 1967, a conference on spallation nuclear reactions and their applications in astrophysics was held at the University of Pennsylvania.
Observation of discrete energy electromagnetic emissions from celestial objects in the radio, IR, optical, lN, and X-ray spectral regions has dramatically advanced our know- ledge in the field of astrophysics.
The General Assemblies of the International Astronomical Union are landmarks in the life of the world-wide astronomical community, as they review, at triennial intervals, the progress made in this scientific field, promulgate the most spect- acular astronomical achievements, formulate scientific programmes for the years to come and, last but not least, deal with the administration and finances of the IAU.
It has become a tradition in the Union to publish the Invited Discourses and the Proceedings of the Joint Discussions held at a Gene- ral Assembly in a separate volume entitled HIGHLIGHTS OF ASTRONOMY.
It has become a tradition in the Union to publish the Invited Discourses and the Proceedings of the Joint Discussions held at a Gene- ral Assembly in a separate volume entitled HIGHLIGHTS OF ASTRONOMY.