A Welcome from the immediate past President

The International Mineralogical Association will hold its 21st General Meeting in 2014 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg from 31 August to 5 September, 2014. The meeting will be organised by the Mineralogical Association of South Africa. After the last meetings in Pisa 1994, Montreal 1998, Edinburgh 2002, Kobe 2006, and Budapest 2010 this will be the first time that a General Meeting of IMA will take place in the Republic of South Africa, a country with a long-standing and well-established tradition in the Mineralogical Sciences, especially in Applied and Economic Mineralogy. Other South African countries with outstanding geological and mineralogical places of interest will also contribute to the meeting. I am sure that we will enjoy a successful conference with a lot of useful and interesting information for all participants and with a number of fieldtrips to places where many of us have not been before; in the name of IMA Council I would like to thank the organisers for their work. I am looking forward to meeting you in Johannesburg.

Ekkehart Tillmanns, President of IMA