The workshop `Astrophysical Dynamics 1999/2000' followed a homonymous
advanced research course, and both activities were organized by me. In this
opening paper of the proceedings book, I describe them and document their
strong impact on the academic life of the local institutions. The advanced
research course was open to graduate students, senior researchers, and
motivated under-graduate students with good background in physics and
mathematics. The course covered several multi-disciplinary issues of modern
research on astrophysical dynamics, and thus also of interest to physicists,
mathematicians and engineers. The major topic was gas dynamics, viewed in
context with stellar dynamics and plasma physics. The course was complemented
by parallel seminars on hot topics given by experts in such fields, and open to
a wide scientific audience. In particular, I gave a friendly introduction to
wavelets, which are becoming an increasingly powerful tool not only for
processing signals and images but also for analysing fractals and turbulence,
and which promise to have important applications to dynamical modelling of disc
galaxies. The workshop was open to a wide scientific audience. The workshop
with published proceedings book was, as a matter of fact, the innovative form
of exam that I proposed for the advanced research course. The contributions
were refereed and their quality is high on average, exceptionally high in a few
cases. The advanced research course and the workshop all together produced
great enthusiasm in the students and welcomed the participation of a hundred
different people, which means an order of magnitude more than an average
graduate course at Chalmers University of Technology and G\"oteborg University.Comment: opening paper; the proceedings book is in
http://www.oso.chalmers.se/~romeo/PROCEEDINGS_BOOK_
