Preface

The 29th edition of the "Symposium on Nuclear Physics" was held at the Hacienda Cocoyoc from January 3–6, 2006. After a long tradition in Oaxtepec, the Symposium temporarily moved to Taxco before relocating itself in 2005 to the Hacienda Cocoyoc in Morelos.

The "Symposium on Nuclear Physics" was conceived from the beginning as a small meeting designed to bring together some of the leading scientists in the field. During the first 29 years, the meeting has become one of the best–known international conferences on nuclear physics. Its most distinctive feature is its ability to gather a wide range of specialists in different areas of nuclear physics, both theorists and experimentalists, in a relaxed and informal environment providing them with a unique opportunity to exchange ideas.

This year, 40 scientists attended the Symposium, about half of them representing foreign institutions from 8 different countries (Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland and USA). The scientific program consisted of 24 invited talks and 10 posters. The subjects covered different aspects of nuclear physics, ranging from nuclear and subnuclear structure, relativistic heavy–ion collisions and radioactive beams to nuclear astrophysics.

As it is customary, many of the foreign participants stayed for a while longer in Mexico after the end of the conference to initiate or continue collaborations with their Mexican colleagues.

Finally, we would like to thank all our colleagues for their enthusiastic participation in this year's meeting. In particular, we are grateful to the members of the International Advisory Committee for their invaluable suggestions and to the anonymous referees for their time and dedication in helping us to mantain the high standard of the contributions published in the proceedings of the Symposium. In this special volume of the Revista Mexicana de Física, we publish the proceedings of the "XXIX Symposium on Nuclear Physics" which contains 20 contributions that were presented as invited talks.

Tatyana Belyaeva
Roelof Bijker
Enrique Martínez–Quiroz