ANALYTICAL C H E M I S T R Y WALTER J. MURPHY, Editor
Kansas City Program HE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETYcontinues to search for Tthe ideal type of national meeting. The Kansas City meeting, March 23 to April 1, is another form of the divided meeting idea. The meeting n ill start on the Tuesday afternoon of one week and conclude on the Thursday of the following week. with much of the social life sandwiched into the week end. T h e same type of meeting will be held in Cincinnati in the spring of 1955. As a result, the membership and Council will eventually have considerable experience and background on this type of meeting arrangement, when all the various types are reviewed. The Division of Analytical Chemistry will hold its sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday of the second week, March 30 and 31, in Room 600 of the Municipal Auditorium. It just so happens t h a t the Fisher Award winner this year is also the chairman of the division-G. Frederick Smith-and the highlight of the %day program nil1 be the Wednesday session in his honor. Harvey Diehl ill preside and will present a brief biographical sketch of D r . Smith’s highly interesting career. Smith will be further “analyzed” by G. L.Clark, mho will discuss “Pedagogy in G. Frederick Smith’s Spectrum of Living.” b y H. H. Willard who will review the “The Effects of Smith’s Research JF’ork on Industrial Analysis,” and lastly by C. ,4. Goetz who will summarize Smith’s career as a “Businessman and Analytical Chemist.” The 1954 Fisher Award winner is then scheduled to present a n address entitled, “The Ferroine, Cuproine, and Terroine Reacting Organic Analytical Reagents,” but the unpredictable and “explosive” Dr. Smith may change his mind and regale his friends and admirers with a dissertation on the current status of professional baseball. a subject dear to his heart. After reading the complete Kansas City program, we have just about concluded t h a t there is no such thing as a n “ideal” program plan for t h e ACS. The Pesticides Subdivision of t h e Division of Agricultural and Food Chemistrv meets on Wednesday and Thursday of the first week of t h e Kansas City meeting and a great many of the papers are analytical in nature. T h e problem of conflicts in meeting dates seems to become more acute each year. If a n analytical chemist was at the Louisiana State University Analytical Symposium a t Baton Rouge the first 4 days of February, attends the &day Pittsburgh Conference in Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy March 1 to 5 , and then takes in the ACS Kansas City
meeting, he will be away from his base of operations for a considerable period within a 2-month period. Probably only a handful will have attended all, but, somehow, better spacing would seem t o be desirable.
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The Society for Analytical Chemistry Society of Public Analysts and Other Analytical Chemnow has a shorter name-The Society for Analytical Chemistry. This is only the second change in name of this 80-year-old British society and is one t h a t surprisingly was not made years ago. The Society of Public Analvsts was founded at a meeting on August 7, 1874. Nembership was a t first restricted t o practicing public analysts and their assistants. Later other analytical chemists were admitted and their presence in the society was recognized on August 7,1907, b y t h e adoption of t h e name “The Society of Public Analysts and Other Analytical Chemists.” Reports from London state t h a t the council of the society came t o t h e conclusion t h a t t h e professional needs of analysts mould be very much better discharged by the newly formed Association of Public Analysts and the Royal Institute of Chemistry. The nem professional association is receiving the full support of the society, including financial assistance. Thp Chemical Age, in reporting the change of name, states: HE
The spirit of the society has not changed, but there is no doubt that the quarters into which its interest has been directed have been altered. The developments in analytical chemistry have been so vast and striking in this period that the society has had to groIv in order t o accommodate them. Khile the society’s interest extends over the whole range of natural and manufactured products, there will be the same platform for the discussion of investigations into the composition of food and drugs.
No change in the character of The Analyst is contemplated. T h e society, however, has made one very important changet h a t of organizing a class of junior membership for chemists between 18 and 27 years of age. While on the subject of names, we wonder sometimes if eventually we in this country and our professional associates abroad will come to the conclusion t h a t the term “analytical chemistry” is too restrictive in the sense t h a t analysts now employ many physical as well as chemical techniques in their work. Certainly t h e title of the journal, The Analyst, is definite acknowledgment of the fact t h a t physics today is just as much a handmaiden of the analyst as chemistry.
