From the editors´ desk

In keeping with the theme "50 Years of the Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society," the first article is "50+ Years of Intrinsic Breakdown" by Ying Sun, Clive Bealing, Steven Boggs, and Ramamurthy Ramprasad all of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, USA. The article reviews the theory of intrinsic breakdown of solids beginning from von Hippel\´s 1932 postulate, that breakdown occurs when electrons gain more energy from the electric field than they lose energy to the lattice, up to the present quantum mechanical concepts. Using von Hippel\´s criterion for intrinsic breakdown, the article shows correlation of the intrinsic breakdown with both bandgap and phonon cutoff frequency with measured data for a range of both ionic and covalently bonded materials, through the use of computational quantum mechanics from first principles. Moving forward from intrinsic breakdown to engineering breakdown of materials with chemical impurities and defects, Monte Carlo computations are being pursued.