Waters Symposium: Atomic Emission Spectroscopy
The Annual James L. Waters Symposium at Pittcon The objectives of the annual James L. Waters Symposium at Pittcon are different from those of other symposia at either Pittcon or other conferences. Waters, founder of the well-known Waters Associates, Inc., and currently president of Waters Business Systems, Inc., arranged with the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP) in 1989 to offer an annual symposium at Pittcon to explore the origins, development, and commercialization of scientific instrumentation of established and major significance. The main goals were and still are to ensure that the early history of this cooperative process be preserved, to stress the importance of contributions of workers with diverse backgrounds, objectives and perspectives, and to recognize some of the pioneers and leaders in the field. Important benefits of these symposia are creation of awareness of the way in which important new instruments and, through them, new fields are created, and promotion of interchange among inventor, development engineer, entrepreneur, and marketing organization. The topics of the first nine Waters Symposia, beginning in 1990, were gas chromatography, atomic absorption spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, high-performance liquid chromatography, ion-selective electrodes, lasers in chemistry, and immunoassay. Publication of the papers presented at the Waters Symposia is a high priority of the SACP. The papers of the first symposium were published in LC.GC Magazine and those of the next four symposia appeared in Analytical Chemistry. The next four Waters Symposia were published in this Journal: the sixth, on high-performance liquid chromatography, appeared in the January 1997 issue (pages 37–
48); the seventh, on ion selective electrodes, appeared in the February 1997 issue (pages 159–182); the eighth, on lasers in chemistry, was featured in the May 1998 issue (pages 555–570); and the ninth, on immunoassay, appeared in the June 1999 issue (pages 767–792). The topic of the tenth Waters Symposium, held in March 1999, was atomic emission spectroscopy, and is featured in this issue of the Journal. In the first paper, one of the pioneers recognized in the Symposium, Richard Jarrell, comments on highlights in the development of spectrochemical analysis. Additional highlights, with the emphasis on the efficacy of various sources for atomic emission spectroscopy, are presented by Gary Hieftje in the second paper. This is followed by a description of the invention of the annular inductively coupled plasma source by the inventor himself, Stanley Greenfield; this device proved to be a major advance in atomic emission spectroscopy and related fields. The fourth paper, by R. F. Jarrell, F. Brech, and M. J. Gustafson, chronicles the contributions of Thermo Jarrell Ash Corporation to the development and marketing of atomic emission instrumentation, with brief mention of the major contributions of Walter Baird’s Baird Associates and Maurice Hasler’s Applied Research Laboratories. Finally, in the fifth paper Samuel Houk describes in lighthearted fashion his personal ups and downs in his development of the important “hyphenated” technique, inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry. J. F. Coetzee University of Pittsburgh Waters Symposium Coordinator
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 77 No. 5 May 2000 • Journal of Chemical Education
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