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Opening Address

I would like to express my hearty welcome to all of you to the ISSP International Symposium on Frontiers in High Magnetic Fields. As President Professor Yoshikawa mentioned, this Symposium is run also under the title of Todai International Symposium, supported by the University of Tokyo. This symposium would not have been realized without this support. We are deeply grateful to President Yoshikawa and the International Exchange Program Committee of the University of Tokyo for the support. I should mention that the Symposium is also supported by the Nishina Memorial Foundation and by the Inoue Foundation for Science, for these supports we are very grateful. We would also like to express our appreciation to a number of companies for their generous financial contributions in spite of the bad economic situation.

This symposium was planned as the 4th ISSP International Symposium. In view of the rapidly growing frontiers in science and the increasing importance of international cooperation, and for the purpose of stimulating and encouraging young scientists in Japan, the Institute for Solid State Physics decided several years ago to host a series of international symposia on various topical subjects in the field of solid state science. The symposium is kept relatively small in size and is sharply focused upon specific subjects on which active research is pursued in our Institute as well as in Japan, in general. The first ISSP International Symposium was held in 1989 on “The Physics and Chemistry of Organic Superconductors”, the second one was held in 1991 on “The Physics and Chemistry of Oxide Superconductors” and the third one was held last year on “Dynamical Processes at Solid Surfaces”. The topic of the present symposium, “High Magnetic Fields”, I believe, is one of the most appropriate subjects for our Institute. In 1980, we started an ambitious project of high magnetic field research. We have recently achieved pulsed fields as high as 500 tesla, or 5 megagauss by a technique called Cnare method. By use of these facilities, a number of excellent works has been performed not only by the staff in our institute but also by many visiting researchers from other institutions both in Japan and abroad. So I think this symposium is most timely and appropriate.

We would like to express our gratitude to all of you for your contributions to the present symposium, in particular to the eminent researchers from abroad who have kindly accepted our invitation to this symposium. I sincerely hope that the symposium is quite successful in promoting the future progress of high magnetic field research through active interactions and discussions among the participants during the symposium. Thank you for your attention.

Shin Takeuchi Director of the Institute for Solid State Physics