Two decades ago, Dr. von Engel organized the International Conference on Phenomena in Ionized Gases in Oxford for the first time. It was proposed there that the conference should be held every two years. In the meantime, research in plasma and gas-discharge physics has undergone an intense development, the variety of phenomena with which it is concerned increasing rapidly. The realization of magnetohydrodynamic conversion of thermal energy into electric power and the solution of the problem of controlled nuclear fusion became extremely important scientific and technological tasks. Quite naturally, specialized meetings became necessary, the conference on controlled fusion and plasma physics now being held regularly every year. Therefore, the organizing committee of the eleventh conference did not accept papers directly related to MHD- generators and thermonuclear fusion. The restricted number of topics resulted in a reasonable number of participants (about 500) from a large number of countries. In the two previous conferences held at Oxford (1971) and Bucharest (1969), some 750 participants took part. On the other hand, the number of contributed papers (about 500) has remained almost unchanged.
二十年前，冯·恩格尔博士在牛津首次组织了国际电离气体现象会议。当时有人提议该会议应每两年举办一次。在此期间，等离子体与气体放电物理研究经历了迅猛发展，其涉及的现象种类迅速增加。磁流体动力热能直接转换为电能以及受控核聚变问题的解决，成为了极为重要的科学与技术课题。自然而然地，专题会议变得必要，关于受控聚变与等离子体物理的会议如今定期每年举行。因此，第十一届会议的组织委员会不再接收直接涉及磁流体发电机和热核聚变的论文。议题范围的限制使得参会人数保持合理（约500人），他们来自众多国家。而在牛津（1971年）和布加勒斯特（1969年）举行的前两届会议上，参会者约有750人。另一方面，提交的论文数量（约500篇）几乎未发生变化。