Preface

The 12th International Conference on High Temperature Materials Chemistry (HTMC-XII) took place at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, 17-22 September 2006. Previous conferences were held in 2000 in Juelich (Germany), and in 2003 in Tokyo (Japan).The conference was sponsored by IUPAC and organized by the Department of Inorganic Chemistry/Materials Chemistry of the University of Vienna together with the Austrian Chemical Society (GÖCH) and the Department of Materials Chemistry of the Vienna University of Technology. The local organizing committee was chaired by Profs. Adolf Mikula and Herbert Ipser of the University of Vienna. Special patronage was granted by the Austrian Federal Minister for Education, Science and Culture and by the mayor of Vienna.More than 150 participants from 25 countries worldwide came to Vienna to present their research in the field of high temperature materials chemistry and to interact with each other in a lively scientific discussion. A considerable number of scientists, especially from Russia and some Eastern European countries, had the chance to come to this conference for the very first time, partly due to partial financial support by the local organizers, for example, by reduced or waived registration fees. It was also a pleasure to see many young scientists who made new contacts with each other and with their senior colleagues from all over the world.The program contained nine plenary lectures, corresponding to the main topics, but also included two special lectures on topics of more general interest, such as "Do universities prepare for industrial careers" (by Knuth Consemüller, chairman of the Austrian Council for Science and Technology Development), and "The arts: What use to materials science" (by Mark Miodownik). The plenary lectures, with the exception of the lecture by Dr. Consemüller, are published in this issue.In addition, there were 51 oral presentations and 100 posters that were on display for the entire week.For this conference, IUPAC sponsored three poster awards, and the winners received a two-year subscription of Chemistry International, a copy of the IUPAC "Gold Book" as well as a certificate signed by the IUPAC president. The winners, as selected by an international jury, were Dario Manara of Italy ("The uranium-oxygen phase diagram at high temperature: Recent advances"), Yuriy Plevachuk of Ukraine ("Density and electrical conductivity of liquid Al-Fe and Al-Ni binary alloys"), and Jiři Popovic of the Czech Republic ("Thermodynamic optimization of the Ni-Al-W system").The social program included a reception in the City Hall of Vienna, sponsored by the mayor of Vienna, as well as a conference excursion to the easternmost Austrian province, Burgenland, with visits to the small town of Rust on the shore of Lake Neusiedl and a guided tour through the Esterhazy Palace in Eisenstadt, the capital of Burgenland. This was followed by a string quartet concert with music by the Austrian composers Joseph Haydn (who had lived and worked in this particular palace for many years) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (whose 250th birthday was celebrated in 2006). The excursion ended with a conference banquet in the state rooms of the palace.Judging from the comments of the participants, HTMC-XII was a big success, and many of the scientists promised to come back to the next meeting, HTMC-XIII. Most probably this will be held in 2009 in California, USA, organized by Prof. Alexandra Navrotsky of the University of California at Davis.Adolf Mikula and Herbert IpserConference Editors