J . Chem. If. Comput. Sci., Vol. 18, No. 1, 1978 57
NEWSAND NOTES
NEWS AND NOTES OBITUARIES
Robert A. Harte Robert A. Harte, 66, executive officer of the American Society of Biological Chemists for 16 years, died of a heart attack on October 1st at his home in Derwood, Maryland. Mr. Harte, who was well known to many of us in the field of chemical information, was born in New York City and graduated from the City College of New York. He later did graduate work at CCNY and at Columbia University. Mr. Harte worked at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research for several years and held various jobs in private industry before becoming the executive officer of the American Society of Biological Chemists at its headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1961. He also was the manager of the Journal of Biological Chemistry which is published by the Society. Last July, Mr. Harte retired from the Society, but his keen interests and talents were put to service by consulting with the National Library of Medicine, the American Lung Association, and the Steven K. Herlity, Inc. Robert Harte also served on numerous committees of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council. He was the author of about 50 scientific papers and was active in the International Union of Biochemistry and the International Federation of Documentation. Among the other professional organizations to which be belonged were the American Society of Biological Chemists, the American Institute of Nutrition, and the American Chemical Society. He also was a member of the Council of Biology Editors and the American Society for Information Science. We all will miss Bob Harte for his wise and prudent counciling, and it will be difficult to image a Gordon Conference on Scientific Information Problems in Research without him. Bruno M. Vasta, Chief Bibliographic Services Division National Library of Medicine Oliver H. Buchanan Dr. Oliver H. Buchanan, 62, Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Pratt Institute, died on May 30, 1977. He obtained his B.S. from Stanford University and his M.S. and Ph.D. from University of Michigan in biochemistry. His industrial career began with Sterling-Winthrop Research Institute, Rensslaer, N.Y., where he was executive-assistant to the director, a member of the executive committee, and director of coordination and integration, which encompassed the screening, collecting, organizing, and disseminating of information on drugs. He was an active member of the ACS Division of Chemical Information, of the American Society of Information Science, and of the Drug Information Association. From his employment with Sterling-Winthrop he became assistant director, Corporate Systems Development and Computer Sciences at Merck & Co., 1966-1968, and then accepted the professorship at Pratt Institute. H.S. John Thomas Maynard Dr. John Thomas Maynard, 58, head of the Du Pont Elastomer Chemicals Department Patent Service, died on
September 17, 1977, after a short illness. He obtained his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in chemistry at Yale and was on the staff as an instructor 1945-6. From Yale he went to Du Pont as a research chemist in the Chemicals Department. In 1956 he was appointed research supervisor in the Fibers Department, transferred to the Elastomers Department in 1959, and in 1970 he was appointed Division Head of Patents in the Elastomer Chemical Department. An active member of the Delaware ACS Section, he served as chairman, secretary, councilor, in many committee assignments, and as one of the early chairmen of the Delaware Section’s Chemical Literature Group. He was a member and the second chairman of the ACS Committee on Patent Matters and Related Legislation, and authored the book “Understanding Chemical Patents: A Guide for the Inventor”. He presented several papers in the programs of the Division of Chemical Literature and of the Middle Atlantic Region. He authored several papers in this Journal and served often and well as a reviewer. H.S. MEETINGS
Canadian Association for Information Science Meeting The Canadian Association for Information Science (CAIS) will hold its 6th Annual Conference from May 10th to 13th 1978 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Montreal (Quebec) Canada. Three to four hundred information specialists (computer scientists, linguists, librarians, documentalists, etc.) meeting under the theme “To better communicate information: a new step”, will focus their attention on telecommunication networks, information processing and retrieval systems, databases, and local and long-distance accessibility of documents. For further information write to CAIS: Comiti de publiciti, c/o Daniel Carroui, C.P. 539 Succursale, Place Desjardins, Montrial (Quibec), H5B 1B3 Canada. 8th Annual Pattern Recognition Symposium The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) and the Electronic Industries Association (EIA) are joint sponsors of the Eighth Annual Symposium on Automatic Imagery Pattern Recognition, which will meet at the NBS headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., on April 3 and 4, 1978. This year’s symposium will emphasize the application of image pattern recognition techniques to new industrial and commercial uses, in addition to the more well-developed military applications. Tutorial papers will bridge the gap between technical developments in image pattern recognition and industrial and commercial needs. Image pattern recognition embraces the general problem of devising computer programs that look at sets of two-dimensional images-photographs, for example, or electron microscope scans-and recognize what the individual pictures have in common. Such a program might group photographs by the average length of straight lines in the image, the number of bends in the lines, or the amount of area with a given optical density. One use of such systems is in the analysis of satellite images of the earth. A set of photographs of the same area, taken in different spectral bands, will have changing patterns of reflectance that correspond to the snow cover on mountains and, under computer analysis, furnish a measure of the water
