The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), a body of the International Council for Science (ICSU), has recently completed a major reform. The reform process began with the formation in April 1999 of an ad hoc Group on SCAR Organisation and Strategy, chaired by Philip M. Smith, to review SCAR's mission, governance, and performance. The group recommended a number of changes to SCAR in April 2000. Most of these have now been adopted. SCAR has a new constitution; a new structure; a new executive office, headed for the first time by an executive director; a new strategy, mission, and objectives; and a new science plan (for details, see the SCAR Web site, httpc//www.scar.org). These changes will enable SCAR to play as important and vital a role at the beginning of the 21st century as it did when it was formed in 1958 to continue the international coordination of Antarctic scientific research that ICSU had begun during the International Geophysical Year of 1957--1958.