The first International Symposium on Urolithiasis Research was held in Leeds, England, in 1968. The meeting was the first in what was to become a series of symposia intended to gather together a diverse group of biochemists and physicians, urologists and engineers, with a common interest in factors affecting the formation of human urinary stones. Since its inception the series has threaded a peripatetic course back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, from Madrid in Spain, to Davos in Switzerland, to Williamsburg in the USA, to Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany and Vancouver in Canada, under...