LAUSR

Inasmuch as most crystalline solids we use are polycrystalline, the study of grain boundaries in materials is an important field of research in materials science. A more general term than grain boundaries is interfaces as it also includes boundaries between different types of materials, different metals, different ceramics, metals and ceramics, etc. Robert Cahn, the founder of Journal of Materials Science (JMS) has always been committed to the study of grain boundaries and once said that his 1953 work on twinning and deformation in a-uranium was ‘‘probably the most fascinating research that I have ever been involved in.’’ (see [1]). Grain boundaries in synthetic materials are of course conceptually similar to grain boundaries or twins in (natural) minerals first studied by French and German scientists since the eighteenth century even if the two scientific communities rarely met (see [2]). Many international scientific conferences have been organized in the field of grain boundaries since 1960 in France at Saclay, partly stimulated by the worldwide efforts to build nuclear plants in those decades. Several of these meetings led to marked proceedings books or special issues. These conferences were formalized into a triennal series of conferences bearing the name of IIB (iib), Intergranular and Interphase Interfaces in materials, conferences since 1989 in Paris. A specially dedicated journal, Interface Science, was edited by David Srolovitz from 1993 until 2004. Interface Science edited peer-reviewed regular articles submitted by iib2001 attendees, when previous IIB conference articles had simply appeared in proceedings books. Interface Science was then incorporated in JMS. Since 2005, JMS has published collections of archival papers from the iib meetings in special issues or