53rd Rencontres de Moriond on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories

The first meeting took place at Moriond in the French Alps in 1966. There, experimental as well as theoretical physicists not only shared their scientific preoccupations, but also the household chores. The participants in the first meeting were mainly french physicists interested in electromagnetic interactions. In subsequent years, a session on high energy strong interactions was added. The main purpose of these meetings is to discuss recent developments in contemporary physics and also to promote effective collaboration between experimentalists and theorists in the field of elementary particle physics. By bringing together a relatively small number of participants, the meeting helps develop better human relations as well as more thorough and detailed discussion of the contributions. Our wish to develop and to experiment with new channels of communication and dialogue, which was the driving force behind the original Moriond meetings, led us to organize a parallel meeting of biologists on Cell Differentiation (1980) and to create the Moriond Astrophysics Meeting (1981). In the same spirit, we started a new series on Condensed Matter physics in January 1994. Meetings between biologists, astrophysicists, condensed matter physicists and high energy physicists are organized to study how the progress in one field can lead to new developments in the others. We trust that these conferences and lively discussions will lead to new analytical methods and new mathematical languages