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.
Fourth International Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research (Report on the Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, USA 17-23 June 1971)