The first international conference on luminescence ever to be held took place in Poland in 1936. This was pointed out at the opening of the 1963 International Conference on Luminescence last September 25 in Torun, Poland, by Alexandra Jablonski, president of the Organizing Committee, and the man after whom the diagram used by every worker in the field of luminescence is named. As for the appropriateness of Torun for an international scientific congress—Torun is the birth-place of Copernicus. The meeting was held in the Nicholas Copernicus University.