Progress in High Temperature Superconductor Research: From Microscopic Understanding to Macroscopic Improvement

Thank you very much, Professor Kitazawa for this very nice introduction. First of all I would like to start with expressing my sincere thanks for being invited to come here and to participate in this symposium. It is a great honor and proves how healthy and how open the international communication is in this field. We enjoyed it in the past years when we were working on different compounds and again, we still enjoy it just as much now when we are working in potentially interesting compounds. So it is with this appreciation for the free flow of information that I am here also.