This volume contains the written proceedings of the Symposium on High Temperature and Materials Chemistry held in Berkeley, California on October 24--25, 1989. The Symposium was sponsored by the Materials and Chemical Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and by the College of Chemistry of the University of California at Berkeley to discuss directions, trends, and accomplishments in the field of high temperature and materials chemistry. Its purpose was to provide a snapshot of high temperature and materials chemistry and, in so doing, to define status and directions.

This report contains short papers and abstracts on the following main topics: Ion-atom collision theory; laser physics; spectroscopy of atoms; spectroscopy of ions; and high velocity collisions.