Liposomes, also called lipid vesicles or simply vesicles, are suprainolecular
assemblies of amphiphiles, surface active substances, that normally contain two
hydrophobic tails and one hydrophilic head group. The investigation of vesicles
belongs to the field ofsupramolecular chemistry. Due to the large size, giant vesicles
are particularly attractive to investigate because their formation and the behaviour of
one single supramolecular entity can be observed by light microscopy. Thc size of
giant vesicles is typically in the range lO-lOOpm, corresponding to an amphiphile
aggregation number of typically 8 x lo8-8 x 10’” per vesicle.
This volume has been prepared as the proceedings of the Workshop ‘Giant
Vesicles’, which was held in Ascona, Switzerland, between June 21 and 25, 19%.
The workshop was financially supported by the Centro Stefan0 Franscini of the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and the Swiss National Science
Foundation. The main aim of this workshop was to bring together scientists working
in different disciplines on giant vesicles and to promote an exchange of basic
notions, new ideas, and new results. This volume provides a collection of idcas and
results obtained from experimental investigations as well as from thcoretical
approaches, covering a variety of aspects ranging &om pure mathematics or physics
to biology.