The conference at the airlie house in 1963

In many ways, the 1963 conference at Airlie House was an unusual event. The meeting convincingly demonstrated that photosynthetic research, previously reported mostly at conferences of botany and/or plant physiology, had become an independent and important field of biological research. New techniques had been developed and yielded exciting new results. Electron transport, photophosphorylation and their coupling were the main topics. Also, intermediates of electron transport, the enzymes catalyzing the reactions, and the structure of the photosynthetic apparatus, were discussed. The conference came at a time, when abundant new data had been accumulated seeking a platform. The editors (Bessel Kok and André Jagendorf) of the proceedings wrote in their introduction: 'Every so often someone manages to remove another stone from the wall through which we all want to see, and the crowds tend to flock around the new peep hole.' Beyond the scientific program, the organizers astounded the participants with an unusual social program.