A short history of the British Society for Developmental Biology.

The British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) today is a very vigorous scientific society which holds two meetings per year. The Spring Symposium, normally held concurrently with a meeting of the British Society for Cell Biology, is a major international meeting of high scientific quality with an attendance of 5001000. The Autumn meeting is a smaller affair with a limited number of foreign speakers and an attendance of 100-200, and is often devoted to a more specialised topic. The society has a high graduate student membership and enables many young members make contact for the first time with the best of international science. Everyone who comes to our meetings is impressed by the friendly and enthusiastic atmosphere as well as by the high quality of the science. In this regard, the BSDB has an advantage over some other British scientific societies, and over some developmental biology societies in other countries.