The 1 st European Chemistry Congress was held in Budapest 27-31 August, 2006, where 17 symposia on various areas of chemistry were presented. All the symposia were intended to be one day events including a keynote and 5 to 10 invited lectures, a few oral presentations and a poster session. This congress became a great melting pot of today's chemistry with more than 2300 participants representing 57 countries from all over the world.
The symposium on ''Polymer Architecture -From Structure to Functional Control'' chaired and co-chaired by two of us (K. Mu ¨llen and B. Iva ´n) received an unexpected high level of interest during the organization period, and so the chair and co-chair recommended the organization of a 3day ''Polymer Architecture'' Symposium rather than a 1-day event in the framework of the congress. The congress organizers, including Prof. Ga ´bor Na ´ray-Szabo ´and Prof. Peter Ku ¨ndig, supported this idea. Consequently, a 3 day Symposium on ''Polymer Architecture'' was held from August 30 to September 1, 2006. This symposium attracted nearly 300 abstract submissions; therefore, the ''Polymer Architecture -From Structure to Functional Control'' Symposium was held in two parallel oral sessions and two poster sessions. Five invited lectures and four special lectures were presented in addition to Prof. K. Mu ¨llen's keynote lecture. The rest of the program included 116 oral and 159 poster presentations. The Symposium on ''Polymer Architecture'' was the largest among the 17 symposia at this 1st European Chemistry Congress. The interest in and the success of this 3 day symposium are clear indications that polymer chemistry and related material science is definitely a leading