The European Workshop on White Dwarfs was initiated by Prof. V. Weidemann, with the first meeting organized in Kiel (FRG) in 1974. Almost every two years, an increasing number of astronomers met to share their results and projects in the subsequent workshops: Frascati (1976), Tel Aviv (1978), Paris (1981), Kiel (1984), Frascati (1986). In the mean time, two major IAU colloquia (No. 53 in Rochester, NY, 1979; and No. 114 in Hanover, NH, 1988) emphasized the importance of these stars for our understanding of stellar evolution. The informal organization of the white dwarf community has been the starting point for large cooperative projects of which the Hubble Space Telescope White Dwarf Consortium and the Whole Earth Telescope are the most spectacular examples. But many other successful collaborations have also been born during the very exciting discussions conducted in the last 16 years on the occasion of our regular meetings. The 7th European Workshop on White Dwarfs took place the year of the seventieth birthday of Prof. Evry Schatzman, whose pioneering work has been the inspiration for many of the new ideas in the white dwarf community. The Scientific Organizing Committee has agreed to dedicate the workshop to him on this occasion. We are pleased to publish as an introduction to the workshop, the text of the talk delivered by Prof. Schatzman at the workshop’s banquet.