Opening Address

It is my pleasure, on behalf of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), to extend our warm welcome to all the delegates and guests attending the Third Marcel Grossmann Meeting to be held in China. I am delighted to see that delegates from about thirty countries and regions are participating in these five days of plenary meetings, group sessions, and workshops. This presents us with an unprecedented opportunity for an in-depth scholarly exchange with colleagues from nearly every part of the world.

The Marcel Grossmann Meetings are regular international meetings of great significance, devoted to recent advances in general relativity, the theory of gravitation, and relativistic astrophysics. It has been demonstrated by the first and second meetings that these sessions provide physicists from various countries who are involved in research on general relativity, a superb opportunity to exchange experiences and enhance cooperation in fields of common interest.

CAST is fully prepared to work closely with the International Organizing Committee and all our colleagues present, in order to ensure the meeting's effectiveness. I am certain that with the joint efforts of all the participants, this meeting will be crowned with total success.

Following the meeting, many friends of ours will have an opportunity to tour different parts of China, and I know you will surely be warmly welcomed by the Chinese people everywhere you go.

Finally, I would like to take this moment to wish you complete success in your endeavors here. I believe that we are all taking a significant step toward the creation of a truly international community of scholars.

Chou Peiyuan

Chairman

China Association for Science and Technology

Greeting

I first went to China in a delegation with the President of Pakistan, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, when he visited China in 1965. This was my first contact with Chinese physics and I was able to lecture during this visit to the high energy physics communities. At that time we at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics at Trieste were engaged in working out the implications of the relativistic SU(6) symmetry of strongly interacting particles. These and other ideas were conveyed to the Chinese physicists who had been isolated both from the West and the East.

I had the privilege of meeting both Premier Chou En-lai and Chairman Mao during this visit. The meeting with Chairman Mao was formal, but Premier Chou En-lai graciously gave me special and individual hospitality in the company of Professor Chou Peiyuan. The subject of our discussion was the building up of physics in China and what was needed for this. Premier Chou En-lai appeared to know all leading physicists in China and I was deeply impressed with his great interest in science. When I remarked on this with surprise, the Premier said that he would not be Prime Minister of China if he did not know the leading scientists and their problems.

In 1966 I received an invitation to attend a physics meeting which the Chinese Academy of Sciences was convening. This was the Four Continent Physics Conference, and it included physicists from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Australia. The meeting was held in Peking and Premier Chou En-lai came to part of it. Chairman Mao also came for a reception and for the photograph of the Conference. Once again it was quite clear that the Chinese Government was placing a very strong emphasis on acquiring science and technology and developing it to the highest level. In conjunction with the meeting there was an exhibition of instrument-making in China. There were also visits to scientific institutions, including the Chinese built cyclotron in Shanghai. The works presented by the Chinese physicists at the meeting were of the highest quality. I was naturally very interested in the development of the ideas of SU(6) symmetry, about which I had lectured the year before, and also the ideas which the Chinese physicists were then developing on stratons--the next strata of elementary particles after hadrons. These stratons are the same as quarks, the fundamental constituents of protons and neutrons. But one could just see the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution" at that time.

After the 1966 Conference I went from China via Hong Kong to attend the Berkeley Conference on High Energy Physics. I must have been one of the very few physicists who was privileged to travel between China and the West at that time.

My third visit to China was in 1972. When I got to Peking I was informed by my gracious Chinese hosts of the Academy of Sciences that on account of the interruption of their work between 1966 and 1972, they would appreciate it if I could give them a series of lectures outlining all that had happened in our field in the intervening period. I spent the next few days giving marathon lectures informing the very eager younger physicists of what had been happening in the West, so far as physics was concerned. It was interesting for me that when I asked for an overhead projector, the projector which was brought still had the roll of transparencies which I had used last in 1966.

At the Fermi Lab in Batavia, at the forum of the International High Energy Physics Conference to which I travelled from China, Professor Yang (who had also visited China just before) and I together addressed a specially convened session and gave an account of our visits to China and our contacts with our Chinese colleagues. We described to the physicists present the immense desire amongst the Chinese physicists to become part of international science once again. During this visit I had my last meeting with Premier Chou En-lai. This meeting lasted for about 45 minutes in the Great Hall in Peking. Premier Chou En-lai once again expressed his intense desire to see Chinese physics coming up to the highest possible level in international standards.

My fourth visit to China was in 1978, after the Tokyo Conference on High Energy Physics. During this visit, when both Steven Weinberg and I were together in China, we had the pleasure of lecturing to keen, young enthusiastic audiences. We visited the sites selected for the building of a future High Energy Physics Laboratory in China. I was also shown the Gravity wave detection devices which had been constructed in Peking. Previously it had not been possible, but now in 1978 I once again explored the possibility of visits of Chinese physicists to the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. Chinese physicists could join the Centre since China was now a member of UNESCO, one of the sponsoring organizations of the Trieste Centre.

The Centre had of course been sending preprints and reprinis of all our works since 1964, but the links which were forged in 1978 brought the first visitors from China to the Centre. During 1979, for example, we had the pleasure of welcoming 17 Chinese physicists to the Centre including Professor Chou Peiyuan. Since then, Chinese physicists have enriched the International School for Advanced Scientific Studies with their presence. Among them have been many of the most respected and senior physicists, as well as younger ones. During the course of these visits it was suggested by Professor Remo Ruffini of the University of Rome that the Third Marcel Grossmann Meeting-part of a series of meetings which had previously been held at the Trieste Centre-be hosted by Chinese physicists in 1982. The modalities for this were worked out by Professor Ruffini in a number of visits to China. The Centre has undertaken to assist in the participation of physicists from developing countries while the meeting also has the sponsorship of the University of Rome. This is the first major truly international meeting to be held in China on an advancing frontier of physics research. More than 300 physicists have expressed their desire to attend the meeting to be held in Shanghai and from all accounts it promises to be an extremely exciting meeting. It will serve as a landmark in the subject of relativistic astrophysics, cosmology, quantum gravity and supergravity. The Italian Government is making a much appreciated special contribution towards this meeting.

Abdus Salam

August 1982