We try in this review to survey advances in all the aspects of Radiation Chemistry (the effects of high energy or ionizing radiation), both basic and applied, made during the period 1995^1999, after the last report issued at the end of 1994. 1 Classically, two main classes of studies are relevant. The ¢rst one includes the primary phenomena induced by the interaction of high-energy radiation with a chemical system. The way the energy is spatially deposited is indeed highly nonhomogeneous and depends on the type of radiation considered. Mutual reactions between the primary species produced also depend on their initial spatial distribution, and therefore on the energy absorption pattern. The kinetic aspects derive directly from the initial events following radiation absorption and thus, when observed at times as short as possible, give useful information on the early energy distribution for each of the radiation types, X-and g-photons, electrons and heavy particles, and, on the in£uence of their intensity and energy per particle.The second class of studies utilizes the background knowledge of radiation chemistry to generate and then to observe the fate of chemical transient species known to be involved in very important chemical or biochemical processes. Numerous data, such as the nature of reaction products, the absolute rate constants, the sequence of elementary reactions constituting a mechanism, and the thermodynamic and spectroscopic properties of short-lived species have been attained. This kind of study of transients and reaction mechanisms, which can be approached only by pulse techniques (essentially pulse radiolysis or laser photolysis, each with its speci¢c advantages), constitutes the new ¢eld of fast to ultrafast chemistry. It concerns extended domains of physical, organic, inorganic, and bio-chemistry. Moreover, the understanding of mechanisms is quite helpful in suggesting new ways of synthesis or degradation induced by irradiation and is now extensively used in developing various speci¢c processes in applied chemistry. The number of studies on the chemical mechanisms and in applied radiation chemistry constitutes an increased fraction of the total publications in radiation chemistry, which we estimate to be around 4000 over the period considered (almost constant compared to the preceding 5-year
