This grant will provide partial support of a planning meeting of international physical societies to be held in Washington, DC, on October 8-10, 1997, organized by the American Physical Society. The planning meeting will include representatives from the largest national membership societies (Deutsche Physikallische Gessellschaft, the UK's Institute of Physics, the Japanese Physical Society and the Japanese Society of Applied Physics, the Chinese Physical Society) and the five international regional societies (the European Physical Society, the Federation of Latin-American Physical Societies, the association of Asia-Pacific Physical Societies, the Euro-Asian Physical Society, the Society of African Physicists and Mathematicians). Observers to the meeting will include the President of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the President of the Canadian Association of Physicists. The purpose of this meeting is to explore important common issues affecting the international physics enterprise and to engage in joint planning to address these issues. The topics which have been identified as most important by all participants are: 1) the formulation and implementation of national and international science policy, 2) the impact of electronic publishing on the dissemination of research results, 3) status and needs for physics education and public education, 4) physics and capacity building in developing nations and 5) the possible organization of an international council or congress of physical societies as a means to sustain international collaboration. The meeting will be organized around plenary presentations designed to outline the problems and alternative solutions, followed by break-out groups assigned specific tasks. A concluding plenary will bring together the elements of the various discussions to include a compilation of outcomes and assignments. The meeting is expected to produce a consensus paper on each of the principal topics of discussion and a general plan for further concerted action.
