Stereoregular Polymers and Stereospecific Polymerizations: The Contributions of Guilio Natta and his School to Polymer Chemistry, Volume 1 covers the developments in understanding the reactions, nomenclature, and physico-chemical properties of polymers. This volume is composed of 82 chapters, and starts with surveys of the synthesis and crystal structure of polymers. Significant chapters are devoted to the characterization of crystalline polymers, with emphasis on the determination of their viscosity and molecular weight. Other chapters deal with stereospecific polymers of olefins, mechanism of stereospecific catalysis, reaction kinetics. This volume also considers the polymerization of synthetic elastomers and the copolymerization of olefins, as well as their reaction kinetics. The remaining chapters describe the X-ray characterization of isotactic polymers. This book is directed toward polymer chemists.

This book contains the texts of the main lectures presented at the NATO Advanced Studies Institute on "Advances in Preparation and Properties of Stereoregular Polymers" held at Tirrenia near Pisa, Italy, from October 3 to 14, 1978. A few contributed papers have also been included because they were concerned with topics not included in the main lectures. The primary objective of the Institute was to assist in the further development of stereoregular polymers because of the ever-increasing demand for new products with exceptional chemical and physical properties. This need has reawakened interest in the field. Indeed there is now a rapidly increasing activity in the study of stereoregular polymerization and the preparation of structurally-ordered polymers with the aim of achieving apprecia ble improvements in existing polymeric materials through new developments in synthesis and properties as well as in discovering new polymeric structures. In order to achieve these objectives, a broad interdiscipli nary cooperation among scientists involved in investigations on the design, synthesis, characterization and application of stereo regular or structurally-ordered polymers will be necessary.

EUPOC 2003, European Polymer Conference on "Stereo specific Polymerization and Stereoregular Polymers" was held on June 8–12, 2003 in Milan, Italy. The symposium was organized to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Giulio Natta, who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Karl Ziegler. The symposium provided a forum to discuss: New results and perspectives on novel catalysts Synthesis, structure, characterization, and applications of polyolefins. The symposium covered the following topics: Traditional catalysts Metallocene catalysts More recent catalysts Molecular modeling Polymerization mechanisms Structural aspects and properties of stereoregular polymers New products and processes. This volume of Macromolecular Symposia is a collection of some of the lectures presented at the symposium and the opening lecture profiling Giulio Natta as a scientist and as a man.