Happy birthday: forty years of FEBS

The 2004 Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) Congress in Warsaw marks the 40th Anniversary of FEBS. To celebrate this event, the Executive Committee decided to publish a memoir, which chronicles the foundation of FEBS and its early development as well as presents an overview of FEBS activities and contributions that support the ever growing disciplines of biochemistry, molecular cell biology and molecular biophysics throughout Europe [Forty Years of FEBS Horst Feldmann (Ed.), Blackwell Publishers, Oxford 2003, on behalf of FEBS]. This paper summarizes some of the most important aspects of this compilation.