The 1982 Antwerp Advanced Study Institute on "Physics of Polarons and Excitons in Polar Semiconductors and Ionic Crystals" took place from July 26 till August 5 at the Conference Center Priorij Corsen- donk, a restored monastery, close to the city of Antwerp. It was the seventh Institute in our series which started in 1971. This Advanced Study Institute, which was held fifty years after Landau introduced the polaron concept, can be considered as the third major international symposium devoted to the physics of pola- rons. The first such symposium took place in St. Andrews in 1962 under the...