Book excerpt: The theme of the above conference was the SYNERGY generated by the interaction of the different disciplines relevant to ERF and MRS investigations. To stimulate this theme, all lecture sessions included a mixture of papers — one session contained applications, methodology, particle dynamics, structure characteristics and whatever is germane to the objective of furthering the standing of the subject. ‘Lead-in’ lectures were given by experts who had not recently been able to explain their work to colleagues in their own discipline. They were also charged with justifying the relevance of their area of work to the ESF/MRS field as a whole.