Bryant W. Rossiter -7- Prog. Coord. Conf. 



Evidence from the Pacific Basin Conference 



Earlier I singled out the Pacific Basin Chemical Congress held this 

 past December in Honolulu as another prime example of the benefits from 

 ACS participation in international meetings. This meeting is too recent 

 for me to have concrete examples of actions taken specifically as a re- 

 sult of anyone's attendance. I can tell you, however, that the Execu- 

 tive Committee responsible for organizing and conducting the Congress 

 was almost overwhelmed by the interest shown by persons wanting to attend 

 and to give papers. The end result was about 3,700 registrants, some 700 

 above the original estimate. More than 2,300 papers were accepted for 

 presentation in some 75 symposia and in general and poster sessions. The 

 demand for meeting rooms was so great, in fact, that the Committee had to 

 abandon its original plan of reserving one morning for only plenary lec- 

 tures for all registrants. To do so would have resulted in a loss of 

 some 30 half-day sessions, which would have been intolerable. The Commit- 

 tee therefore scheduled the plenary lectures for the mornings of the first 

 three days at the rather early hour of 8 a.m. before the scientific ses- 

 sions began at 9 a.m. Despite the attractions of Honolulu, attendance 

 every morning was outstanding. 



If you have had a chance to read the December 24, 1984, and January 

 7 and 14, 1985, issues of Chemical & Engineering News , I expect you have 

 been as impressed as I have with the quality of the research and develop- 

 ment findings reported in Honolulu. You might also be interested in know- 

 ing that television, radio, and newspaper coverage has been extensive. 

 Fifty reporters covered the Congress, which is more than normally cover 

 ACS meetings except possibly those held in New York and Washington, D.C. 

 As of last week, more than 300 clippings had been received by the ACS 

 based on newspaper and magazine coverage, and they are still coming in. 

 Since improving the public's understanding of chemistry ranks high on the 

 Society's list of priorities, you can see the benefit from such an inter- 

 national meeting. 



Let me end this discussion of the Pacific Basin Chemical Congress by 

 sharing with you another one of the very important dimensions of interna- 

 tional meetings. In one major way, the Congress was a typical scientific 

 meeting, bringing together as they do a large number of chemists and chem- 

 ical engineers who report on their latest findings. It might readily 

 have been held in any developed country of Europe or North America. It 

 was held in the middle of the Pacific Basin, however, and it was con- 

 ceived from the beginning as being not only a typical scientific meeting 

 but also a meeting that would bring together chemists and chemical engi- 

 neers from countries with very different backgrounds and needs. 



In his welcoming remarks during the Opening Ceremony for the Congress, 

 Dr. Seaborg noted that the Pacific Basin ranks as the area of the future. 

 Nearly two thirds of the world's four-plus billion people live in countries 

 with Pacific Ocean beaches. In our country's case, trans-Pacific trade now 

 outranks trans-Atlantic trade, the traitional focus for the U.S. Moreover, 

 Basin countries range from the highly developed ones of North America, Ja- 



