Book excerpt: to the Fundamental and Applied Catalysis Series Catalysis is important academically and industrially. It plays an essential role in the manufacture of a wide range of products, from gasoline and plastics to fertilizers and herbicides, which would otherwise be unobtainable or prohibitive ly expensive. There are few chemical-or oil-based material items in modern society that do not depend in some way on a catalytic stage in their manufacture. Apart from manufacturing processes, catalysis is finding other important and over-increasing uses; for example, successful applications of catalysis in the control ofpollution and its use in environmental control are certain to in crease in the future. The commercial import an ce of catalysis and the diverse intellectual challenges of catalytic phenomena have stimulated study by a broad spectrum of scientists including chemists, physicists, chemical engineers, and material scientists. Increasing research activity over the years has brought deeper levels of understanding, and these have been associated with a continually growing amount of published material. As recentlyas sixty years ago, Rideal and Taylor could still treat the subject comprehensively in a single volume, but by the 19 50s Emmett required six volumes, and no conventional multivolume text could now cover the whole of catalysis in any depth.