Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2005
This issue of Microscopy and Microanalysis contains a selection of invited papers from the topical symposium, Thirty Years of Energy-Dispersive Spectrometry in Microanalysis, sponsored by the Microbeam Analysis Society (MAS) at the Microscopy & Microanalysis (M&M) '98 meeting, held July 12-16 in Atlanta, Georgia. This was the second MAS topical symposium held in conjunction with the annual M&M meetings, the first being at the meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1996. The MAS topical symposia are part of an initiative to provide venues for in-depth study of topics of special interest to the microbeam analysis community. The next MAS topical symposium is planned as part of M&M '99 and will celebrate Fifty Years of the Electron Microprobe.