Why a textbook on biomedical and pharmaceutical polymers? A considerable number of books have already been published on polymers. Despite this, my experience as a teacher is that no simple textbook is available for introducing polymers to graduate and postgraduate students who use them in the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields. The subject of polymers is taught to students in materials science who are supposed to conceive new polymers and processes, or to be involved in the production, transformation and design of polymer-based items. An introduction to polymers is not frequently given to students in the domain of health, but polymers are increasingly present in this multidisciplinary domain. Such users of polymers are confronted with an overwhelming number of specialised books in which they just cannot find the information that they need in their specialised domain.