n Editorial 1

Chetnometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 12 (1991) 1 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam

m Editorial

This issue contains a number of lectures pre- sented at the COBAC meeting associated with the last Euroanalysis meeting in Vienna (August 1990). COBAC stands for Computer Based Ana- lytical Chemistry and has been organized for many years in the German-speaking world, where it has always been one of the leading chemometrics conferences. Euroanalysis is the congress where European analytical chemists meet; it is orga- nized by the national societies, working groups, etc.

I remember that in 1972 I was first introduced to chemometrics (which did not bear this name at that time) at a Euroanalysis congress in Heidel- berg, where I met Professor Auke Dijkstra, who gave a presentation on information theory. I was working on an application of operations research to ion exchange at that time, and realised with several others that there was a need for a more formal or mathematical approach to analytical chemistry. Since then I have made chemometrics my first scientific priority. Euroanalysis continues

to play an important role in convincing analytical chemists that chemometrics is important; the COBAC section was probably the best attended section of the congress. Unfortunately, only a relatively small number of the papers given was submitted for publication in this special issue.

Nominally, I was one of the organizers of this congress. However, I should confess publicly that, except for writing this Editorial, my participation in the organization was limited, and I want to thank Wolf Wegscheider from Graz, who really did all the work.

It is a pity that chemometrics is not as estab- lished in other fields of chemistry as in analytical chemistry. I hope this will change and that some day congresses in the fields of organic chemistry or biotechnology to name but a few, will also have their own successful section on chemomet- rics.

D.L. MASSART