This Volume is based on the Lectures presented at the Meeting "Chemistry
at the Beginning of the Third Millennium", wh ich was held in Pavia,
Italy, during the period 7-10 October, 1999. The Meeting involved the
participation of scientists from German and ltalian Universities of the
'Coimbra Group'. The 'Coimbra Group', wh ich was founded in 1987,
gathers the most ancient and prestigious European Universities, with the
aim to promote initiatives in both research and teaching and to provide
guidelines for the progress and development of the University system.
German and Italian Universities within the Coimbra Group propose every
year a theme for scientific discussion, which originates a Meeting to be
held in a German or Italian University. The Meeting in Pavia was the
fifth of the series and followed those of Bologna (1995), Jena (1996),
Siena (1997), Heidelberg (1998). Each Meeting is centred on a topic from
either humanistic or natural sciences and consists in aseries of
lectures presented by distinguished scientists from the six
participanting Universities. For the Pavia Meeting, the Steering
Committee chose Chemistry as the topic and gathered researchers with
experience in almost all fields of chemistry. In particular, during the
Meeting, lectures were presented on many up-to-date subjects of
chemistry, including: materials science, superconductors, supramolecular
chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, fullerenes, liquid crystals,
photoinduced electron transfer, etc. The different topics were covered
by distinguished and renown researchers of the various fields.
