The Fifth International Conference on Atomic Physics was held July 26-30, 1976 in Berkeley, California. Invited talks were solicited which were representative of the most important developments since the fourth conference held in Heidelberg, Germany in 1974. In this volume, we have collected the manuscripts of the invited speakers, in the belief that they represent a guide to contemporary re search in atomic physics. Experimental work on such topics as the search for parity violation, spectroscopy and collision processes of fast, highly-stripped heavy ions, exotic atoms, high-Rydberg states, laser spectros copy, photoelectron spectroscopy, and others are described. The work described in these manuscripts is a clear mea sure of the continued vitality of our field. One unhappy event since the last conference was the passing of Dr. Victor William (Bill) Cohen (1911-1974) of Brookhaven National Laboratory. Bill was one of the scientists who recognized early the need for personal communication among atomic physicists and was the prime mover in establishing the present international conference series. Everyone who has enjoyed the stimulation of these conferences is indebted to Bill Cohen, and we dedicate this volume of the proceedings to his memory."

The last decade has seen dramatic progress in the development of devices for producing mu1ticharged ions. Indeed it is now pos sible to produce any charge state of any ion right up through 92 fully-stripped uranium (U +). Equally dramatic progress has been achieved in the energy range of the available ions. As an example, fully-stripped neon ions have been produced in useable quantities with kinetic energies ranging from a few ev to more than 20 Gev. Interest in the atomic physics of multicharged ions has grown apace. In the fusion program, the spectra of these ions is an im portant diagnostic tool. Moreover the presence of mu1ticharged ions presents a serious energy loss mechanism in fusion devices. This fact has motivated a program to study the collision mech anisms involved. In another area, mu1ticharged ions are present in the solar corona and the interstellar medium and knowledge of their collision properties and spectra is essential to understand ing the astrophysics. Other possible applications are to x-ray lasers and heavy ion inertial fusion. On a more fundamental level, new possibilities for testing quantum electrodynamics with mu1ti charged ions have emerged."

The progress in the physics of highly-ionized atoms since the last NATO sponsored ASI on this subject in 1982 has been enormous. New accelerator facilities capable of extending the range of highly-ionized ions to very high-Z have come on line or are about to be completed. We note particularly the GANIL accelerator in Caen, France, the Michigan State Superconducting Cyclotrons in East Lansing both of which are currently operating and the SIS Accelerator in Darmstadt, FRG which is scheduled to accelerate beam in late 1989. Progress i low-energy ion production has been equally dramatic. The Lawrence Livermore Lab EBIT device has produced neon-like gold and there has been continued improvement in ECR and EBIS sources. The scientific developments in this field have kept pace with the technical developments. New theoretical methods for evaluating relativistic and QED effects have made possible highly-precise calcula tions of energy levels in one-and two-electron ions at high-Z. The calculations are based on the MCDF method and the variational method and will be subject to rigorous experimental tests. On the experimental side, precision x-ray and UV measurements have probed the Lamb shift in the one and two electron ions up to Z=36 with increasing precision."