The growth of interest in the subject of Polymer Colloids over the last twenty five years or so has been very large resulting now in major international conferences on an annual basis and many national ones as well. The interest stems not only from the wide range of applications of these materials but also from a curiosity as to the mechanism of formation and their growing use as model particles to investigate fundamental aspects of physics and chemistry. In July 1988 a NATO Advanced Study Institute was held in Strasbourg, France, at the Centre St. Thomas. As an educational introduction to this I nstitute a series of eight lectures was given to cover the fundamental aspects of the subject. These eight lectures have now been compiled into an Introductory Text covering, emulsion poly merization, dispersion polymerization, inverse emulsion polymerization, the morphology of copolymer latices, the colloidal properties of latices, characterization methods and rheology. It is hoped that these will serve a wide audience, undergraduates, graduate-students and research workers, both in industry and academe. The chapters all contain review material up to date at the time of publication. fhe 1988 NATO Advanced Study I nstitute was made possible by a grant from the NATO-AS I programme and the following companies: BASF, Ludwigshafen, West Germany The Dow Chemical Company, Michigan, USA Dow Chemical Rheinwerk GmbH, Rheinmunster, West Germany ICI PLC, Runcorn, England S. C. Johnson and Son Inc., Racine, USA NORSOLOR, Verneuil en Halatte, France Rhone Poulenc, Aubervilliers, France.
