The 29th Congress AMPERE on Magnetic Resonance and Related Phenomena was held together with the 13th Meeting of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance (ISMAR) at the Technische Universität Berlin (TUB), Berlin, Germany from 2nd to 8th August 1998. This was the second Joint AMPERE - ISMAR International Conference, the first one being held in Delft in 1980.

The joint conference was organized primarily by members of the TUB with Dieter Ziessow as Chair, Wolfgang Lubitz as Co-Chair, Friedhelm Lendzian (Conference Secretary) and Dietrich Haberland (local organization, exhibitions, and social program). Valuable help and advice were provided by the members of the Program Committee (H. H. Limbach, Berlin; K. Möbius, Berlin; H. Oschkinat, Berlin; D. Stehlik, Berlin; D. Beckert, Leipzig; B. Blümich, Aachen; K.P. Dinse, Darmstadt; C. Griesinger, Frankfurt/M; H. Günther, Siegen; A. Haase, Würzburg; U. Haeberlen, Heidelberg; H. Kessler, Munich; R. Kimmich, Ulm; G. Kothe, Freiburg; M. Mehring, Stuttgart; D. Michel, Leipzig; H. Rüterjans, Frankfurt/M; J.-M. Spaeth, Paderborn; H. W. Spiess, Mainz) and by Bruno Maraviglia (President Groupement AMPERE, Rome), Maurice Goldman (President ISMAR, Paris), Raymond Kind (Secretary General Bureau AMPERE, Zurich), Pierre Servoz-Gavin (Secretary General ISMAR, Lyon), and members of the ISMAR Council and the Committee AMPERE.

The joint conference attracted 730 participants from 40 countries with a large fraction of young scientists. The major delegation came from Germany (260), followed by USA (71), Russia (65), U.K. (39), Poland (37), and Japan (33). Quite remarkable is the balanced distribution (without Germany) with respect to West European (168), East European (141), and Oversea countries (161). With the support of sponsorship (particularly from the German Research Council, Heraeus Foundation (German Physical Society), German Chemical Society, and Department of Energy, USA) we were able to support a large number of scientists from East Europe as well as young scientists from Europe and abroad.

The scientific contributions of the meeting are collected, following the established AMPERE tradition, in a two-volume book of extended abstracts entitled Magnetic Resonance and Related Phenomena, published August 1998 by the TUB (Editors D. Ziessow, W. Lubitz, and F. Lendzian; 598 contributions, 1354 pages) under ISBN number 3-7983-1780-1. The proceedings were distributed among participants at the beginning of the conference. Further copies are available and may be purchased by contacting the editors. Full papers will be published in the journals Applied Magnetic Resonance and Bulletin of Magnetic Resonance.

On Sunday evening the conference was opened with welcome addresses by the President of the TUB, Prof. H.-J. Ewers, the Presidents of the Groupement AMPERE and ISMAR, the Chair, and the Co-Chair. Then the audience was tuned to scientific matters with the sound of FID signals which transmuted into the song Summertime followed by classical European songs. The scientific program started with an Evening Lecture by R.R. Ernst, Quo Vadis NMR and continued from Monday morning to Friday evening. On Monday evening, as a special event being open to Berlin's entire scientific community, A.Pines and E.L. Hahn presented a tandem lecture on Echoes of the Future which found an attendence of well above 1000 people. Overall, the program consisted of 52 invited and 85 contributed lectures with 497 papers presented as posters (being on display during the entire conference).

The scientific program was organized into plenary, three parallel-lecture and 30 poster sessions. About 65% of the contributions were from the NMR, the remaining 35% from EPR other fields. Apart from the four Award Lectures the topics of the morning plenary lectures (45 min) were

• Localized and Delocalized Spins in Fullerenes (M. Mehring),

• Rheo NMR: Rheological Insights by Means of NMR Microscopy (P. Callaghan),

• A Witch's Brew: Membranes, Peptides & Rare Earths (R.R. Vold),

• Structure of Enzyme Active Sites by ENDOR and ESEEM (B. Hoffman),

• Double-Quantum Solid-State NMR Techniques for Analyzing Polymer Conformations and Water-Accessible Sites in Proteins (K. Schmidt-Rohr),

• Investigating Protein Folding by NMR (C. Dobson),

• Can Paramagnetism be Beneficial for Solution Structure Determination of Metalloproteins (C. Luchinat),

• Prospects of High-Frequency EPR Spectroscopy (J. Schmidt), and

• Functional Imaging (K. Ugurbil)

A highlight of the conference were the Award Lectures on Wednesday morning. The 1998 AMPERE Prize was confered on Klaus Möbius (Berlin) in recognition of his contributions to the theory, methodological developments, and applications of EPR spectroscopy throughout the last 30 years. After the laudatio by B. Maraviglia, K. Möbius talked on Millimeter and sub-mm High-field EPR and ENDOR: Harvest-Time in Photosynthesis Research. The 1998 ISMAR Prize was confered on Ray Freeman (Cambridge) in recognition of his pioneering develop- ments of modern pulse techniques essential to applications in high resolution magnetic resonance spectroscopy. After the laudatio by M. Goldman, R. Freeman talked on Pioneers and Dangerous Eccentrics: The Evolution of High-Resolution NMR. The International EPR Society (IES) Gold Medal Award was given to A. Schweiger (Zurich) in recognition of his pioneering developments in pulsed EPR/ENDOR spectroscopy. After the laudatio by J.R. Norris, IES President, A. Schweiger talked on Dances with Electron and Nuclear Spins. The IES Silver Medal was awarded to R.W. Fessenden (Notre Dame, USA) in recognition of his early work on time-resolved EPR/CIDEP spectroscopy. After the laudatio by J. Pilbrow, IES Secretary General, R.W. Fessenden gave a talk on Applications of CIDEP and Time-Resolved ESR for Determination of Reaction Mechanisms. Furthermore, the EIS Young Investigator's Award was confered on A.I. Smirnow (Urbana-Champaign, USA). The Wednesday morning plenary sessions closed with the election of K.H. Hausser (Heidelberg) and C.P. Slichter (Urbana-Champaign, USA) to Fellows of the IES.

On arrival, delegates were invited to a Welcome Reception on Sunday evening in the magnificent Reception Hall of the TUB which was sponsored by Bruker Analytik GmbH. On Wednesday afternoon the conference excursion to Berlins rivers and canals took place which gave some evidence of the fact that the city has more bridges than Venice. On Wednesday evening the conference dinner was held in the Berlin Zoo after the closure for the public. After a Welcome Drink, delegates were invited to explore this fabulous nature reserve right in the center of the city of Berlin. Guided tours were being offered to the Ape House, Hippopotamus House, and Carnivore House (with its most famous inhabitant, the male Giant Panda Bao Bao). The Dinner took place on the open terrace of the Zoo restaurant, umbrellas were fortunately not needed. Much to the surprise of many delegates the Chair and his TUB students had an active part in serving the guests. It was, however, a great pleasure on his part being able to welcome many colleagues whom he failed to meet during the first three days of the conference. Throughout the week excursions and visits for accompanying participants to local places of interest were being offered.

The organizers would again like to thank the speakers, the session chairs, the poster presenters, and the participants who made the conference so successful and memorable. They would also like to thank the sponsors for their generous support. Last but not least they express their deep gratitude to the members of the Iwan N. Stranski Institute for Physical and Theoretical Chemistry, Max Volmer Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and Biochemistry, and WTB/TUB as well as the many undergraduate and graduate students for their efficient assistence that was essential to the organization of the conference.