The first of the annual Operator Theory conferences in Ti- mi oara held four years ago was a meeting of operator theory spe- cialists from the National Institute for Scientific and Techni- cal Creation in Bucharest and from the University of Timi oara. Since then, the participation to these conferences has greatly increased, by being attended first by operator theorists from allover the country and (since 1978) by an increasing number of foreign mathematicians...