Considering the high incidence of myopia - and its inherent morbidit- it may wonder that the item is dealt with only sporadically in recent literature, and almost never at international conferences. However, there was a First International Conference on Myopia in New York 1964, and the Second was held in Yokohama 1978, affiliated to the XXIII World Congress of Ophthalmology. Here it was attempted to set out lines for future myopia research, and, as a practical implicaton, the arrange ment of the Third International Conference on Myopia was entrusted to Danish ophthalmolOgists. This conference took place in Copenhagen, August 24-27, 1980. To make the scope the widest possible, the conference was, as was the pre decessing in Japan, open not only to ophthalmologists, but 'to all being active in the various aspects of myopia research'. The conference report gives a picture of the Copenhagen meeting. Furthermore, a platform or current status of myopia research has hereby been established. The editors have made it their main task to arrange the papers, and to bring them in a form suited for print, while criticism by editorial referees has been considered inappropriate. The papers give an impression of the ambiguity still prevailing in the field, and although 't, rends' are obvious, a fmal consensus of Conference was not arrived at. To document this state of affairs, however, is considered a useful task."