Report of General Discussions at IAU Symposium No. 78 on Nutation and the Earth's Rotation

The purpose of this report is to summarize the discussions held on Friday, 1977 May 27, that preceded the adoption by IAU Symposium No. 78 of the four symposium resolutions concerning the theoretical and observational studies of nutation. It was the aim in the first half of the session to clarify the scientific problems and to obtain a broad concensus so that the resolutions committee could finish drafting the resolutions to be put to the symposium after the coffee-break. During the second half-session some new scientific points were made, but they have been incorporated in the report of the discussions during the first half-session; the report for the second half-session contains only a record of the voting and of the discussions on procedure and on the wording of the resolutions.