Editor's preface

The 4. Latin American Symposium on Nuclear Physics is the fourth in the series of biannual meetings devoted to promote the development of Nuclear physics in latin America. The Symposium was held at El Colegio Nacional, in the heart of Mexico City, on September 24-28, 2001, with one day (Sept. 27( at Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares. The 4. Latin American Symposium on Nuclear Physics is the forum to present findings in nuclear physics as well as to develop fruitful collaborations with Latin American scientists. Previous meetings were successfully organized by Univ. Nacional de Colombia (San Andres, Colombia, 1999), and Univ. Simon Bolivar (Caracas, Venezuela, 1997 and 1995). These meetings helped the development of collaborations, for instance, between Univ. de los Andes (Colombia) and Jefferson National Lab. (USA), Univ. Nacional (Colombia) and Florida State Univ. (USA), INFN (Italy) and Venezuela and Brasil, Univ. Buenos Aires (Argentina) and UAM (Mexico) and UTEP (USA), among others. This Symposium provided a forum to present new results in current fields of experimental, theoretical and applied nuclear physics: nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics, heavy ions, unstable beams, nuclear chaos, applied nuclear methods in materials medicine, archaeology, forensic, development of nuclear physics in Latin America, and opportunities of graduate studies in Europe and North America. Coincident to the Symposium, The Universidad Autonoma Nacional de Mexico awarded an honorary doctorate to one of our distinguished participants, Prof. Dr. Dr. hc. mult. Walter Greiner, from the Institut fuer Theoretische Physik, J.W. Goethe-Universitaet in Frankfurt, Germany. Dr. Greiner has excelled not only by his studies of nuclear structure, superheavy nuclei, exotic nuclei, cluster radioactivity, strong fields, superheavy quasi-molecules, vacuum decay, relativistic heavy ion collisions, chiral symmetry, strange matter, and the quark-gluon plasma, but also by his prolific formation of researchers, many of whom also attended the Symposium. (author)