Abstract
AT the seventh General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union which Was held at Zurich during the week beginning on August 11, more than three hundred astronomers from thirty countries met (in many cases for the first time for ten years) to discuss their past results, their current problems and their future plans. The machinery of international collaboration, kept going during the War by the good offices of astronomers in neutral countries, had been overhauled at a meeting of the Union's Executive Committee at Copenhagen in the spring of 1946 ; and it was largely because of the spadeWork put in by that committee, then and since, that the full Assembly could get on with its business so expeditiously at Zurich. The Federal Institute of Technology was kindly made available to delegates throughout the week. The hundred sessions held by the forty commissions into which the Union is subdivided put no severe tax on the accommodation available, and the many mixed commission meetings, colloquia and informal lectures, though they were well attended, could always find an auditorium of ample size. It was evident that behind the smooth functioning of the local arrangements, which included (as well as the formal business) a full programme of social events and sightseeing trips for delegates and their guests, lay a tremendous amount of hard work by a most efficient organising committee, headed by Prof. Waldmeier, director of the Zurich Observatory.
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The International Astronomical Union. Nature 162, 899–900 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162899a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162899a0