395 



Bryant W. Rossi ter -8- Prog. Coord. Conf. 



pan, and Australia/New Zealand to ones with tremendous potential but with 

 great problems. 



Dr. Seaborg was preceded by the Governor of Hawaii, George Ariyoshi , 

 who extended Hawaii's official welcome. He was followed by the first of 

 the plenary lecturers, Prof. Takashi Mukaibo, Acting Chairman of the Ja- 

 pan Atomic Energy Commission. The three of them were followed on the 

 mornings of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday by the other three plenary lec- 

 turers. So far as I can determine, none of these six people consulted any 

 of the others about their talks. It was striking, therefore, that they 

 independently made the same point: the need to provide opportunities to 

 foster cooperation among chemists and chemical engineers from developed 

 and developing countries. As Dr. Seaborg wrote in his message in the 

 final program for the Congress: 



This dimension is especially important, since dis- 

 parities in conditions between developed and de- 

 veloping countries represent one of the most im- 

 portant threats to peace facing the world today. 

 It is absolutely essential that these disparities 

 be reduced and indeed eliminated as rapidly as 

 possible . . . 



To which I might simply add that the Society's Constitution specifi- 

 cally specifies that an object of the ACS is to "cooperate with scien- 

 tists internationally and (to be) concerned with the worldwide applica- 

 tion of chemistry to the needs of humanity." 



Number and Nature of International Meetings 



The ACS now has a history of sponsoring international meetings. It 

 held a joint meeting with The Chemical Institute of Canada in 1970. In 

 1975, the ACS, The Chemical Institute of Canada,' and the three societies 

 in Mexico represented here today sponsored the First Chemical Congress of 

 the North American Continent . The same five societies then sponsored the 

 Second Chemical Congress of the North American Continent in 1980, and they 

 have now agreed to sponsor the third in the series in 1988. The Canadian 

 and American societies met together a second time in 1977. In 1979, the 

 ACS and The Chemical Society of Japan sponsored the ACS/CSJ Chemical Con - 

 gi^ess , with the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand institutes of chem- 

 istry as official participant organizations. The just-completed Pacific 

 Basin Chemical Congress completes the list, with the ACS and the Canadian 

 and Japanese chemical societies as sponsors and with two federations of 

 chemical societies and 19 chemical societies in Pacific Basin countries as 

 official participant organizations. 



The trend to jointly-sponsored international meetings is firmly es- 

 tablished around the world. Latin American chemical societies held their 

 sixteenth chemical congress last year. The Federation of Asian Chemical 

 Societies held its first chemical congress in 1981, its second in 1983, 



