CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING
NEWS VOLUME 4i, NUMBER i4
The Chemical W o r l d This W e e k
APRIL 8, 1963
Eighteen ACS Divisions Meet in Los Angeles Society's 144th National Meeting hears Priestley Address, and outline of 25 years of professional training
Sunny, smog-free weather marked the opening of the 144th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society last week in the sprawling City of the Angels. Eighteen of the Society's 23 divisions were represented in the technical program. Mid-week estimates foretold a total registration of 5550 chemists and chemical engineers from around the nation and abroad. Sixteen awards administered by the Society were presented at the General Meeting in Los Angeles' Statler Hilton. Nobel laureate Peter J. W. Debye received the Priestley Medal, highest award in American chemistry, from ACS President Henry Eyring. (See page 92 for the full text of Prof. Debye's award address, "Determination of Structure by Radiation Scattering.") The 16 award winners were honored also at a reception and dinner before the General Meeting. The dinner speaker, vice-chancellor William G. Young of the University of California, Los Angeles, looked back on a quarter century of effort by the ACS Committee on Professional Training. When the committee was established, Dr. Young says, it was instructed to suggest a set of minimum standards. These standards were to upgrade the teaching of chemistry and serve as a guide in the preparation of a list of approved schools. Continued on page 24
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From registration to award presentations, American Chemical Society members
Mrs. Timasheff and Dr. Serge N. Timasheff, winner of the Borden Award in the Chemistry of Milk, chat at the reception honoring award winners
Vice-chancellor William G. Young, University of California, Los Angeles, gets a point across in speech at dinner honoring awardees
Nobel laureate Willard F. Libby was given honorary membership in Phi Lambda Upsilon fraternity at Monday luncheon
Not scriveners, but ACS members filling in blanks at registration desk
Chatting, discussing, greeting old friends before the dinner honoring recipients of ACS awards
had a busy week in Los Angeles
ACS President Henry Eyring (center) discusses chemical developments with reporters covering the meeting during a News Service press conference
Biosynthesis of terpenoids helped win Fritzsche Award for Dr. A. J . Birch (right) of University of Manchester, England; Fritzsche Brothers' Edward E. Langenau presented the award
The press and members' wives were not left out of meeting activities
Ladies attending the meeting gathered at the hospitality center in the Biltmore for friendly talk and help in making sightseeing plans
Hercules Powder's Dr. Robert W. Cairns (left) presented James T. Grady Award to Fortune's Lawrence Lessing
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The program thus initiated, Dr. Young says, has had a "profound influence" on chemical education in the U.S. The list of approved schools, he points out, has risen fivefold, from 60 to 305. The committee has not always trod a smooth path. About a decade ago, it was considering the approval of graduate work. At that time, Dr. Young says, it was charged suddenly from some quarters of being dominated by industry and of interfering with the educational policy of schools. The problem, Dr. Young recalls, was chiefly lack of communication
and understanding. The committee, he says, has always been made up of recognized scholars and teachers who have controlled completely the policies that govern the committee's work. Its primary aim was to improve graduate training. Instead of creating artificial minimum standards, which might have put a strait jacket on graduate programs, the committee conferred with about 75 department chairmen on their graduate programs. The committee's most constructive contribution to graduate work, Dr. Young believes, is the ACS Directory of Graduate Research in
Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Chemical Engineering. This volume gives prospective graduate students an opportunity to assess and compare the various graduate programs. Currently, the committee is concerned over the rapid growth of the chemical literature. The reason, Dr. Young says, is that it is creating pressure for continuing growth in the number of courses, both undergraduate and graduate. In the majority of U.S. graduate schools, he points out, it now takes an average of four or more years to earn the Ph.D. Because of the need for flexibility in revising curriculums, the Committee on Professional Training has revised its minimum standards. The changes are designed to allow schools to take advantage of the greatly improved courses in biology, mathematics, physics, and chemistry in the secondary schools. The intended result is partly to release the pressure in undergraduate and graduate courses. The committee has much to do yet, Dr. Young believes. For one thing, the hundreds of junior colleges that have sprung up in this country open the question of evaluation of chemistry in such schools.
For More News from the ACS Meeting, See These Pages 40 A unique type of octahedral anion complex has been found by chemists at Allied Chemical 41 Nitrogen-15 is used to study exchange rate of NH3 between hexamminechromium and liquid ammonia solvent 42 Naphthylazo compounds prove active against worms that cause snail fever 43 Main enzymic browning substrate in dates is caffeoylshikimic acid 46 Lithium nitride reacts with acid chlorides to produce N,N-diacylamides 48 Fluorescent ion exchange resins are used to detect radioactive nuclides 60 Pipelining solids in capsules lowers power costs for pumping 61 Free radical initiators reduce halogen needs to make polystyrene self-extinguishing 65 Improved instrument to measure oxygen in oil-field water is based on new amperometric cell
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