More than 1,800 scientists from the United States and 33 other countries convened at the MRS Spring Meeting in San Diego, April 24-29,1989 to meet with their colleagues and discuss the latest research on a wide range of topics. According to Meeting Cochair Richard W. Siegel of Argonne National Laboratory, “It was a stimulating, broad-based, interdisciplinary scientific meeting of the high caliber that the materials research community has come to expect from the Materials Research Society.”

Siegel, along with Cochairs Robin EC. Farrow of IBM's Almaden Research Center and Angelica M. Stacy of the University of California led a cadre of 54 volunteer symposium organizers to present an impressive array of leading-edge topics in 17 different symposia, including a late-news technology update on diamond films. Topics ranged from the fundamental condensed-matter physics and chemistry of small atomic clusters, high Tc superconductors, and the processing of a wide variety of optica], electronic, and ceramic materials to the consideration of problems and solutions regarding materials for the world's infrastructure.

Complementing the wide range of scientific interests probed at the Spring Meeting were a three-day exhibit of the latest analytical and processing equipment, and a week-long series of 15 specialty, review, and survey short courses, many directly related to the symposium topics.