Physical Processes

Extract

When Dr. Seaton asked me to chair the epilogue session of our conference I could not help but wonder if it were to be considered an example of type-casting. He told you that when an Englishman is asked to give a prologue, he immediately begins thinking of quotations from Shakespeare, so I must tell you that when an American is asked to deliver an epilogue, his thoughts turn naturally to Ernest Hemingway. I therefore suggest to you as the theme for our symposium the closing words of the main character of To Have and Have Not, which may for publication here be bowdlerized to read “One man alone ain't no —, — good at all.” Over and over again in the last week we have seen that discussions between astronomers have provided new insights, have opened up new fields for investigation, have revealed unsuspected connections between apparently unrelated problems. I believe this has been a very fruitful conference because there have been so many fruitful discussions among the participants. I shall therefore try to summarize briefly my impressions of the things we have learned and the things we may reasonably hope to learn in the next few years about physical processes in planetary nebulae, and then five of our colleagues will summarize the other sessions of our conference. We invite discussion from all of you after each of these summaries, and also during the general discussion at the close.