The history of IAU Symposia

Abstract

The history of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) meetings goes back to 1922 when the first IAU General Assembly (GA) was held in Rome, Italy, following the IAU creation in 1919. However, until 1953, no individual symposia were organized and the GAs were the only official gatherings for astronomers. All together, eight IAU GAs were held during 1922–1952. The IAU Symposium 1 was held in 1953 in Groningen, Netherlands. Starting with 1955, several IAU symposia were regularly held in different places, and since 1959, the IAU also began to organize colloquia to discuss relatively smaller topics. Twenty IAU colloquia numbered as I–XX were held in the period 1959–1971, and another series of IAU colloquia was organized in 1968–2005, numbered as Nos. 1–200. At present IAU symposia are the only official scientific meetings, nine of them being organized every year. IAU S349 “Under One Sky: the IAU Centenary Symposium”, held in Vienna during the IAU GA XXX, was the last one by number in 2018. Thus, the IAU has a 65-year history of symposia and all together 348 such meetings have been held, on average 5–6 annually. At present most of the IAU symposia during the years of GA are being organized in the framework of the GA, there being typically six symposia during each GA. All together, 31 IAU GA have been organized during the years 1922–2018, including 30 regular ones and one Extraordinary GA (1973 in Warsaw, Poland), typically once every three years. Since 1974, the IAU has also organized regional meetings in Europe, Asia and Pacific (APRIM), Latin America (LARIM), and the Middle East and Africa (MEARIM). The European ones were discontinued in 1990 after the creation of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) and the organization of the yearly JENAM/EWASS. The 348 IAU symposia have been organized in 43 countries. We give the statistics of all IAU symposia by year of organization, by various topics of astronomy and astrophysics, and by host countries and cities.