This volume chronicles the proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Surfactants in Solution (SIS) held in Gainesville, FL, June 10-15, 1990. This series of symposia have been smoothly running since 1976, but the appellation "Surfactants in Solution" was used for the first time in 1982 in Lund. Since then our logo "SIS" has become very familiar to everyone involved in surfactants. In Lund the meeting was billed as the Fourth International Symposium on Surfactants in Solution. Earlier three events were held under different rubrics, but proceedings of all these symposia, except the 7th SIS held in Ottawa in 1988, have been properly documented. As a matter of fact so far 10 volumes have appeared under the title "Surfactants in Solution". 1,2,3 The program for the 9th SIS was very comprehensive and many ramifications of surfactants were covered, and it was a veritable international event. It contained a total of 384 papers by 869 authors from practically every corner of our planet. Just the sheer number of papers is a testimonial to the high tempo of research and tremendous interest in this wonderful class of materials. As in the past, there were plenary lectures (5), invited talks (37), oral presentations (195) and poster presentations (147). The plenary lectures were given by Prof. J. Th. G. Overbeek, Prof. C. A. Bunton, Prof. H. Ti Tien and Dr. J. Swalen. The lecture by Prof. Overbeek, the doyen of surface and colloid science, was a real treat.