In 1970 Andries Miedema was the second supervisor of his thesis on tracer diffusion. He inspired him to subsequent work on diffusion and defects in VIII-IIIA compounds at a time, when, – as Bakker’s talk was recently introduced at a conference -, these materials were not yet relevant’ as they are now. Was it again a foreseeing view of Andries Miedema? Was it not Miedema’s standpoint that intermetallic compounds would become important in the future?