The 1991 Taipei International Symposium on Statistical Physics
　

1 August - 7 August at Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei

Preface of the Proceedings    [ AIP conference proceedings 248 (1992) ]

      Taiwan has a comparatively short history of doing research on basic sciences and an even shorter history of doing research on statistical physics. To improve this situation, the Institute of Physics of Academia Sinica in Taipei has held conferences on statistical physics almost every year since 1984. These included the 1984 Workshop on Statistical Physics, the 1986 Summer School on Statistical Mechanics, the 1987 Summer Symposium on Statistical Mechanics, the 1988 Workshop on Statistical Mechanics, the 1989 Workshop on Statistical Mechanics, and the 1990 Taipei Workshop on Chaos and Critical Phenomena. In every conference, some foreign speakers were invited. The proceedings of the 1986 Summer School on Statistical Mechanics and the 1988 Symposium on Statistical Mechanics were edited by Chin-Kun Hu in the book Progress in Statistical Mechanics. which was published by the World Scientific Publishing Company, in 1988. Since all these conferences were intend mainly for researchers in Taiwan, they were not announced internationally.

      In 1990, the building "Center for International Academic Activities" was completed. This center is quite convenient for visitors to the Academia Sinica. With such nice facilities, we held the 1991 International Symposium on Statistical Physics. We also chose a specific subject: Computer-Aided Studies in Statistical Physics. We chose this subject because workstations and personal computer have become quite popular and inexpensive in recent years. It is no longer difficult for researcher to acquire very powerful computing facilities. Furthermore, there are many interesting problems in statistical physics that may be studied with the aid of computers. The conference was held on June 20-25, 1991. It was sponsored by the Institute of Physics and the Computing Center of Academia Sinica (Taipei), the National Science Council of the Republic of China (Taiwan), The Physics Research Promotion Center, and the Physical Society of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Besides expressing our thanks to the speakers and participants, we are also grateful to the following people for their contribution to the conference: Members of International Advisory Committee: Professors K. Binder, B. Hu, L. P. Kadanoff, D. Kim, M. Suzuji, and F. Y. Wu; and members of the Local Organizing Committee: Professors H. H. Chen, l. J. Chen, P. M. Hui, S.C. Lin, S. P. Li, H. C. Tzeng and Drs. C. -N Chen and W. -J Tzeng.

      The book Computer-Aided Studies in Statistical Physics contains invited and review papers presented at the 1991 Taipei International Symposium on Statistical Physics: Computer-Aided Studies in Statistical Physics. These papers are classified into the following categories: (1) lattice models; (2) phase transitions: statics and dynamics; (3) chaos, neural network, and self-organized criticality; and (4) quantum systems. We hope that this book will be useful for people working on statistical physics.

Chin-Kun Hu
Academia Sinica, Taipei
September 1991