Report on the 21st international shock interaction symposium

Abstract

The 21st International Shock Interaction Symposium (ISIS21) was held from August 3rd to August 8th, 2014, in Latvia. It was organized jointly by the Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Saint-Petersburg, Russia) and the University of Latvia (Riga). The Ioffe Institute and the University of Latvia enjoy long-term scientific cooperation. For the majority of shock reflection researchers, Latvia was a new country. For this reason, we decided to suggest Latvia as a possible venue for this symposium at the ISIS-20 in Stockholm 2 years ago. We are very grateful to the International Advisory Committee for their trust. As a logo for the planned Symposium, we selected the auseklis—the Latvian symbol of the morning star. In Latvian folk tradition, it bears the meaning of good will, and thus we thought to express our wishes of good luck to the event and its participants. The Symposium started in the heart of Latvia’s capital city, Riga, in the University of Latvia main building. The importance of this event for the academic life of the country was noted in the welcome speech by Mr. Igor Pimenov, Member of Parliament of Latvia, Secretary of the European Affairs Committee of Saeima. The next speech by Prof. Indriķis Muižnieks, vice-rector for research, gave an insight into the past and present of the University as a flagship of higher education in Latvia. Just to mention a remarkable fact, the opening ceremony of ISIS-21 took place exactly 100 years after Friedrich Zander, known alongside Ernst Mach as the inventor of optical Mach-Zander interferometers, received his diploma of graduation from the University of Latvia (at that time known as Riga Polytechnic) in the walls of the very same building on 19 Raiņa boulevard, Riga.