About the International Microscopy Congress
The International Microscopy Congress (IMC) is held every four years under the auspices of International Federation of Societies for Microscopy (IFSM). It provides an international forum for the latest in microscopy and microanalysis, as employed in fields that range from the physical sciences to the life sciences, and from engineering to archaeology.
The most recent congress, the sixteenth, was held in Sapporo, Japan, in September 2006. With the theme 'Microscopy for the 21st Century – Contribution to Life and Materials Science', the congress was a tremendous success, attracting nearly 2000 papers from participants that drawn from all corners of the globe.
The 17th International Microscopy Congress will be held from 19–24 September 2010 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At this congress, the IFSM will vote to decide which country will host IMC 18 in 2014.
History of the congress
The IMC has a long and prestigious history. It started in the Netherlands in July of 1949 as the Conference on Electron Microscopy, exploring the science and challenges of this rapidly growing field. Despite the lack of any transnational nomenclature, the conference certainly was international, drawing attendees from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Holland, India, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the USA, and Uruguay. The list of participants reads like a who's who of many important figures in the history of electron microscopy, including names such as Le Poole, Gabor, Castaing, Cosslett, Agar and Hillier. The post-WWI political situation, however, prevented German scientists, who had made such enormous strides in the science of electron microscopy, from attending.
With the success of this initial conference, a follow-up was held little more than a year later in Paris in September 1950. Dubbed the First International Congress of Electron Microscopy, presumably because it saw the first use of the 'international' adjective, this second meeting was bigger and better than the first, and included participants from other countries such as Germany, Italy and Japan. From then on, the congresses moved to their quadrennial format, with then next one held in London in 1954. That was the first conference held with the support of an international body, the Joint Commission on Electron Microscopy of the International Council of Scientific Unions, which was formed in 1951 and would be dissolved in 1955 to allow formation of the International Federation of Societies for Electron Microscopy. The London congress also eliminated the inconsistencies in congress numbering when, in recognition of the meetings in Delft and Paris, it was called the Third International Conference on Electron Microscopy. As a result of this historical hiccup, however, there never actually was a conference or congress that included 'second' in its title.
Since those early days, the International Congress on Electron Microscopy has continued to be a success every four years, although it has seen many changes during its 60-year history. The most recent, and probably the most noteworthy in many ways, was the change in title that occurred for the 2006 congress, which was called the International Congress on Microscopy, not to remove the 'electrons' but rather to formally expand its scope to include all forms of microscopy.
Previous congresses
2006 – Sapporo, Japan
2002 – Durban, South Africa
1998 – Cancun, Mexico
1994 – Paris, France
1990 – Seattle, USA
1986 – Kyoto, Japan
1982 – Hamburg, Germany
1978 – Toronto, Canada
1974 – Canberra, Australia
1970 – Grenoble, France
1966 – Tokyo, Japan
1962 – Philadelphia, USA
1958 – Berlin, Germany
1954 – London, UK
1950 – Paris, France
1949 – Delft, Netherlands
Terms of Use | Disclaimer | © 2010 AMMS All rights reserved.