Hydrogen movement which has marked not long ago its 25th anniversary leads a world civilization to the ecologically clean economics. The idea of this movement is based on the fact that hydrogen is an ecologically clean, technically effective and suitable energy-carrier and chemical reagent. Successes of hydrogen energy are known everywhere and recently they were summarized in "The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy" (T. Nejat Veziroglu, IJHE, 1995, Vol. 20, No.1, pp.1-7) and in the Hydrogen Energy Progress XIII, Proceedings of the 13th World Hydrogen Energy Conference, Beijing, China, June 12-15, 2000. Eds Z.Q. Mao, T.N. Veziroglu. Vol. 1. pp. 3-19. All these years hydrogen economy has been developing very actively in all aspects: production of hydrogen, storage and transportation, utilization in industry, in transport vehicles, in every-day life, etc. Thousands of people are working in these fields.

At the same time the interaction of hydrogen with materials has been investigated by many scientists all over the world. It turned out that wonderful properties of hydrogen, on which the civilization of the 21st century will be based, will not rest here. Just the last two decades witnessed the discovery and comprehensive study of a new, unknown before, fundamental property of hydrogen; to influence on the materials as strong and controllable; as temperature, pressure, physical fields and streams of particles do. A new paradigm of metal science was formulated and is successfully being developed. This paradigm is based on the unique property of hydrogen to serve as an external agent and alloying element to treat materials in order to improve their structure and properties, and with the purpose of creating new advanced materials (Victor A.Goltsov, Metal-Hydrogen System. Proc. Intern. Symp., Miami, 13-15 April 1981. Oxford e.a., 1982, pp. 211-223; Hydrogen Energy Progress VII. Proc. 7th World Hydrogen Energy Conf., Moscow, 25-29 September, 1988. Pergamon Press, N.Y. e.a., 1988. Vol.3, pp. 11721-1740).

As a result within the total hydrogen movement during all these years a community of specialists in metal science, physics and chemistry working out a new field of science and engineering, namely hydrogen treatment of materials, was being formed.

But, for many years interactions of these two hydrogen communities were not too close. Now the situation is changing, thanks to the activities of the Permanent Working International Scientific Committee on Hydrogen Treatment of Materials (PWISC HTM) and a new series of International conferences "Hydrogen Treatment of Materials". This cooperation is important because of hydrogen economy problems of safety and life-time of the equipment and apparatuses working with hydrogen. On the other hand, it is also very important for hydrogen economy to have good functional materials: hydrides, membranes, electrodes, magnetic and catalytic materials, and so on. Activity of PWISC HTM is covering various aspects of processing materials for hydrogen energy.

Permanent Working International Scientific Committee on Hydrogen Treatment of Materials was organized in 1997 under the auspices of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy. The head-quarters of PWISC HTM works on the base of the Donetsk State Technical University.

Members of PWISC HTM are:

Activities of the PWISC HTM in hydrogen treatment of materials is open for any specialist who has scientific achievements and shows initiative in the HTM-community and the World hydrogen movement.

Some duties of the Committee are as follows:

With that end in view there have been instituted Honorary Gold Diploma     and Honorary Silver Diploma      which are openly presented triennially at the International conferences "Hydrogen Treatment of Materials".

The First International Conference "HTM-95" got together more than 90 representatives of 15 countries and was successful. The Conference covered practically all aspects of hydrogen treatment of materials, material science, physics and chemistry of hydrogen-material systems. There was held the Round Table "Hydrogen Induced Improvement and Degradation of Materials - Two Sides of the Same Medal. Is That So?". Prospects of material science support of the development of hydrogen energy were discussed.

It was really the first international meeting of scientists and engineers which had summarized the development in this new field of science and technology during the last 25 years. The proceedings of selected papers of this Conference was published in "The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy" (1997, Vol. 22, No. 2/3)

The second "HTM-98" Conference was held in June 1998. It got together more than 100 representatives of 13 countries and was very fruitful. The proceedings of selected papers of this conference were published in "The International Journal of Hydrogen Energy" (1999, Vol. 24, No. 9)

At the Second International Conference "HTM-98" for the outstanding scientific achievements and great activity in the World hydrogen movement the Honorary Gold Diplomas     were presented to Prof. Frederick A.Lewis (Belfast), Prof. Boris A.Kolachev  (Moscow), Prof. Alexander A.Ilyin  (Moscow), Prof. Al'bert A.Katsnel'son (Moscow), Prof. Ellina Lunarska (Warsaw), Prof. Igor K.Pokhodnya (Kiev), Dr. Daniel Fruchart (Grenoble).

For the excellent scientific achievements and great activity in the World hydrogen movement the Honorary Silver Diplomas    were presented to Prof. Hironobu Fujii (Hiroshima), Prof. Hirohisa Uchida (Kanagawa), Prof. Lev V.Spivack   (Perm'), Dr. Alexander A. Kurdyumov   (St. Petersburg), Dr. Nikolai N.Vlasenko  (Donetsk), Dr. Yury A.Artemenko   (Donetsk), Dr. Boris P.Tarasov (Moscow).