The AGU Chapman Conference on Waves and Instabilities was held August 7–9, 1979, on the campus of the University of Denver, in Colorado. The conference was cosponsored by the University of Denver and the American Physical Society. The convenors were V. L. Patel, University of Denver, and B. Coppi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.The conference was planned to review those basic processes in plasma that are relevant to wave generation mechanisms and plasma wave instabilities. The scope of the conference was not limited to a particular region of space. Rather the conference attempted to obtain a unified view of this subfield of research. Consequent to this approach, problems included waves and instabilities that occur in the laboratory, near‐earth plasma (e.g., ionosphere, magnetosphere, and the nearby interplanetary region), Jupiter environment, the sun and interstellar space. The emphasis was on the basic ideas of plasma processes, wherever they may occur, whether natural or manmade. The conference was attended by experimentalists and theorists working on laboratory and space plasma. The attendees included researchers at various levels of research experience, spanning the range from graduate students to senior scientists. The NSF and NASA funds provided opportunity for the students and younger scientists to attend the conference.