The International Conference on Lasers and Applications was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 29 June to 3 July 1980. This conference was held to commemorate the memory of Professor Sergio Porto who died suddenly about one year earlier while attending a laser conference in the Soviet Union. The sub- ject matter covered the active areas of laser devices, photochemistry, non- linear optics, high-resolution spectroscopy, photokinetics, photobiology, photomedicine, optical communication, optical bistability, and Raman spec- troscopy. The conference was attended by over 150 people including...