Forty years of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research

1996 marks the 40th anniversary of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research — an event which is widely celebrated. For four decades of its existence, the Joint Institute has made a distinguished contribution to the development of science and technology. Since its foundation on 26 March 1956, excellent researches have been performed at JINR in various fields of modern physics, accelerator and reactor techniques and numerous specialists for the Member States have been trained. JINR has at present 18 Member States. Also, the Joint Institute has bilateral agreements with BMBF (Germany) and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences signed at the governmental level. The Joint Institute takes active part in international collaborations at CERN (Geneva), IN2P3 (France), INFN (Italy), BNL, FNAL (USA), and at other scientific centres throughout the world. JINR today is an internationally recognised scientific centre which incorporates the fundamental research of the structure of matter, development and application of high technologies, and university education in the relevant fields of knowledge. The celebrations on the occasion of JINR's 40th anniversary were held at the Institute on 26—27 March 1996. At the 80th session of JINR's international Scientific Council held on 27 March, the Dubna scientists, their colleagues, and partners delivered reports on various activities of this international centre. Some of these reports are published in this issue.