Conference Opening

Abstract

It was only about two months ago that I had the pleasure to address myself as the president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics to an impressive number of physicists gathered here in Gothenburg on the occasion of the International Conference on Plasma Physics under the chairmanship of Hans Wilhelmsson. This time, Ingvar Lindgren together with Sune Svanberg and Arne Rosén have assembled here the 8th International Conference on Atomic Physics which also is sponsored by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. There are many connections between these two fields of research. Both at the generation of plasma and at the diagnostics of it a great number of atomic processes come into play. From that point of view plasma physics is partly atomic physics, although plasma physics is indeed living its own life, characterized among other things by the coupling between kinetic motion and magnetic field. We may recall in this connection the tremendous difficulties we have experienced in fusion research to achieve in the physics laboratory magnetic confinement and to reproduce the processes which occur under astrophysical conditions and which are basic in our understanding of the Universe.