On behalf of the Organizing Committee and the Local Program Committee, it is my pleasure to invite you to participate in the XII International Conference on Electron Microscopy of Solids (EM'2005), which will be held in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland from June 5 to June 9, 2005 (from Sunday to Thursday).

Our conference is a continuation of eleven successful and well established conferences. The first conference in this series was organised in 1953. Since 1996 these conferences have been organised as international ones.

The aim of the EM'2005 is to provide an overview of present achievements in electron microscopy and to highlight recent applications in physics, chemistry and materials science. During the EM'2005 the scientists will have a chance to exchange the recent results in two categories: (i) instrumentation and methodology and (ii) application of EM in materials science.

The EM'2005 will comprise scientific sessions consisting of plenary lectures, invited lectures, oral and poster presentations as well as the trade exhibition and social events. About 20 speakers from Europe, Japan and USA accepted our invitation to give a talk at the EM'2005. All of them are well known in the electron microscopy community. Papers presented at our conference will be published in one of more Special Issues of the Journal of Microscopy (Blackwell Publishing).