The early days of ECASIA

The reasons for the foundation of ECASIA lay far back in the late 50s and 60s of the last century, when material analysis was identical with bulk analysis. With the appearance of surface analytical techniques such as SIMS and AES, the importance of surface analysis became evident. Unfortunately, analysis at that time was considered as inferior to fundamental studies. The infrastructure of analytical laboratories, worldwide, was poor, compared with today's abundant facilities. To cope with all these difficulties, cooperation of all those involved in the application of surface techniques to practical problems was considered inevitable. This resulted in the establishment of the concept of ECASIA in 1982 followed by the first ECASIA conference in 1985. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.