Composite materials after seventy years

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of our journal I would like to pen an account of the state, as I see it, of Fibre Composite Materials. My personal involvement in this field started in the very early 1960s. And I remember being asked to join the Honorary Advisory Board of a journal to be entitled Journal of Materials Science, a few years after that, namely in 1965/66. I thought it a very good idea of Robert Cahn at the time and have been pleased to remain associated with the journal ever since. Since those days the field of composite science has expanded enormously and lately with Carl Zweben I edited, as General Editor, a six volume work on the science and technology of composites entitled Comprehensive Composite Materials. In what follows I have set down a summary of the field of composites engendered by my editing of that comprehensive work adding some history of how the field arose and including some pointers to the future. C 2006 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.