As President and organiser of the 26th Congress of the International Society pf Blood Transfusion 'ISBT 2000', I am pleased to introduce this work on the biochemistry of human blood groups, which will serve as a valuable complement to blood group serology work. For this new edition the author has singlehandedly covered virtually all blood group research published before the current year. It is my firm belief that all participants in the ISBT conference will find this book a highly useful addition to their scientific libraries. Vienna, April 2000 W.R. Mayr Congress President Preface This revised and updated edition of the monograph on the chemistry and biochemistry of human blood groups is being published to honour the 1 Oath anniversary of Dr. Karl Landsteiner's discovery of human blood groups here in Vienna. Five years have passed since publication of the first edition, and in this time research on the biochemistry of human blood groups has reached staggering proportions. Thanks to extensive molecular biological applications, research groups have identified the bearer molecules of even more blood groups, and are now able to clarify the molecular basis of a vast number of blood group specificities. Human blood group research has become one of the most fruitful of all biochemical research fields. While this development is immensely gratifying to a researcher like myself, who has worked in human blood groups for the past 34 years, coping with the close to overwhelming number of publications has proved a highly challenging task.