This book was originally published in Japanese in honour of Professor S. Chikazumi on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Tokyo in March 1982. Physicists who had been supervised by him or had closely col laborated with him wrote articles on recent developments in magnetism and its engineering applications. In the preface of his excellent textbook Physics of Magnetism (Wiley, 1964), Professor Chikazumi says that recent research in magnetism deals with fundamental physical problems and, at the same time, with more secondary magnetic phenomena, as well as with engineering applications of magnetic materials to electromagnetic machines, permanent magnets and electronic computers, and that the purpose of his textbook is to give a general view of these magnetic phenomena, focusing its main interest at the center of such a broad field. Always keeping such a viewpoint in mind, Professor Chikazumi has contributed a great deal to both fundamental physics and applications of magnetism. This is described in Chap. 1 of this book. Many books have been published on both the physics and applications of magnetism. However, no single book has a viewpoint covering both of them. The recent development of high technology needs such a broad viewpoint for scientists and engineers since it is a product of both fundamental science and technology. Research in magnetism is based on the response which materials show to the application of magnetic fields."

This volume represents the Proceedings of the Oji International Seminar on the Application of High Magnetic Fields in the Physics of Semiconductors and Magnetic Materials, which was held at the Hakone Kanko Hotel, Hakone, Japan, from 10 to 13 September 1980. The Seminar was organized as a related meeting to the 15th International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors which was held in Kyoto between 1 and 5 September 1980. From 12 countries, 77 de legates participated in the Seminar. This Seminar was originally planned to be a formal series of International Conferences on the Application of High Magnetic Fields in the Physics of Semiconductors, which was first started by Professor G. Landwehr in 1972 in WUrzburg as a satellite conference to the 11th Semiconductor Conference in Warsaw. The Conference in WUrzburg was con ducted in an informal atmosphere which was followed by three conferences, in WUrzburg in 1974 and 1976, and in Oxford in 1978. At the current Seminar the physics of magnetic materials was added to the scope of the Seminar, because high-field magnetism is also an important research area in the physics of high magnetic fields and is also one of the most active fields in physics in Japan. In the last decade, considerable effort has been devoted to develop the techniques for generating the high magnetic fields in many high-field labora tories in the world."