This special issue of "Carbon," a collection of reviewed papers, was presented at Symposium A, Fullerenes and Carbon Based Materials at the combined 1997 International Conference on Applied Materials/European Materials Research Society Spring meeting (ICAM'97/E-MRS'97) held in Strasbourg (France) from 16-20 June 1997.

140 presentations were given at the conference in seven different sessions. The most extensively addressed research fields were carbon materials in general, diamond-like carbon, pristine, polymeric and endohedral fullerenes, nanotubes, and carbonitrides.

Of accepted manuscripts, the largest number of contributions is dedicated to carbon materials in general and to fullerenes. Highlights in the former are the discussions on hydrogen-free carbons and on hard carbon coatings. In the fullerenes group many new results on polymeric structures and on endohedrally-doped higher fullerenes are reported.

The field of carbon nanotubes is strongly represented with reports on new techniques for the production of the tubes and where the analyses by scanning probe microscopy and light scattering are the central problems. Carbonitrides as well as a few contributions from related molecular materials like cubanes or oligophenylenes are included.

The symposium proved to be a valuable venue where new scientific and technological problems in the field of new materials were reported.

At the International Winter School on "Electronic Properties of Polymers and Related Compounds" particular attention was paid to a very new and special field in polymer research. It is concerned with the study of the electronic structure of polymers and with physical and chemical properties directly re lated to this structure. In particular, tutorial and research contributions on electrical, electrochemical, optical, magnetic, lattice dynamical and structural properties were presented. In addition, review reports on related topics such as charge transfer complexes and linear-chain compounds (transi tion-metal trichalcogenides) were included. In two discussion meEjtings, the special role of polyacetylene and possible present and future applications of the electronic properties of polymers, as e.g. conductors or as electrodes in electrochemical cells, were elucidated. The electronic properties of polymers cover a wide range of research problems which are of particular interest for polymers with a 1T-electron system. Thus, a great part of the work presented was concerned with conjuga ted systems. Additional presentations dealt with other systems such as bio polymers, photopolymers or electrets, which are of significant scientific and technical importance. It was demonstrated how their electronic proper ties are increasingly being investigated from a fundamental point of view by applying known concepts of snlid-state science."