X trends in analytical chemistry, vol. 5, no. 8,19&i

er known as the Sheraton Centre, in New York in November 1977, and in 1980 moved to the New York Statler, now known as the New York Penta. At the 24th symposium in 1985, 49 oral and 6 poster technical sessions, consisting of over 250 papers, were

held. Symposium registration was over 4500, and there were about 160 exhibitors. Symposia were held to honor recipients of the NY SAS Gold Medal and the AMS Benedetti- Pichler Memorial Award, as were 18 workshops.

The 1986 Silver Jubilee Eastern Analytical Symposium will be held from the 20th to the 24th of October at a new EAS location. Quite appro- priately, the EAS has moved to New York’s finest convention facility, the New York Hilton Hotel.

ANACHEM Award 1986

Dr. Henry Freiser has been selected as the recipient of the 1986 ANA- CHEM Award. Established in 1953, the ANACHEM Award has been presented annually to an analytical chemist because of his or her out- standing research achievements and service to the field.

Dr. Freiser’s selection is based on his numerous contributions as a re- searcher, teacher, and administra- tor. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the City College of New York (1941) where he later returned as a lecturer (1945). He re- ceived M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1942 and 1944, respectively, from Duke University. He was Chairman of the Department of Physical and Analytical Chemistry at North Da- kota State University (1944-1945) prior to spending a year as a Re- search Fellow at the Mellon Insti- tute. He then joined the faculty of the University of Pittsburgh as an as- sociate professor (1946-1958). He joined the Chemistry Department of the University of Arizona as Profes- sor and Head (1958). He has spent terms at other institutions as a visit- ing professor: the University of Cali- fornia, Los Angeles (1968), Kyoto University (1972), and the California Institute of Technology (1979).

His research activities span areas as diverse as metal chelation, solvent extraction, determination of funda- mental constants, reaction kinetics, non-aqueous chemistry, novel ion se- lective electrodes, and innovative approaches to chromatography. These have resulted in more than 270 publications, and numerous chap- ters, monographs, and books. He has graduated 28 Ph.D. students, 17 M.S. candidates, and 75 postdoctoral fellows. His current group is large

and productive. He is active in various organiza-

tions including the Pittsburgh Con- ference (of which he was a founding member), the American Chemical Society, the National Research Council, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. He has served on various Editorial/Ad- visory Boards including Analyticul Chemistry, Talanta, and Separation Science and Technology. A special is- sue of Tulantu (Vol. 32, No, SB, 1985), dedicated entirely to Profes- sor Frieser, includes a complete bi- ography.

Dr. Freiser and his wife Eddie have raised three talented children: daughters Debbie and Manny (both

artists) and son Ben (Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Purdue).

Dr. Henry Freiser

observer topics of interest in the current literature

Internationally compatible environmental data

from Philip K. Hopke

One of the major problems facing scientists who are trying to under- stand the functioning of the environ- ment or protect environmental quali- ty is the limited amount of data that describe the particular system that they are trying to study. Because there are so many variables, many of which we can only approximately de- scribe let alone measure, there is a need for very large multivariate data sets. There is also a need for others studying similar or related problems to be able to utilize the data from other studies. However, in order to use other peoples’ data, you have to

know that it is compatible with the kinds of data you are taking or with yet other data which are to be com- bined into a larger set than to be ana- lyzed .

To illustrate the recognized impor- tance of environmental data compat- ibility, the Bonn Summit Meeting of the seven leading, western industrial nations approved a report of a work- ing group that put forward a number of recommendations to the interna- tional scientific community and stressed in particular the need to im- prove and harmonize techniques of environmental measurement . The problems of international compatibi- lity of environmental data was the

63EElsevier Science Publishers&Y,

trends in analytical chemistry, ~01.5, no. a,1986 XI

subject of a workshop held in May 1986 on the campus of McGill Uni- versity in Montreal, Canada, under the sponsorship of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA).

scope to the meteorological data that are currently available worldwide as a result of the efforts of the World Meteorological Organization.

CODATA is an interdisciplinary committee of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) that seeks to improve the quality, re- liability, management, and accessi- bility of data of importance to all fields of science and technology. It is involved with the preparation of evaluated key data sets that are needed by various international con- stituencies. It has been working to establish format standards for im- proving international compatibility of databases, to provide guidelines for the presentation of data in the primary literature, and to supply in- formation on sources of reliable data. This CODATA-sponsored workshop addressed a variety of is- sues related to data on air, water, and soils as well as data management problems that need to be addressed in order to make data more readily available and more valuable to a va- riety of possible end-users.

There were two general ap- proaches discussed regarding how data compatibility and exchangeabil- ity could be enhanced. The first would be to greatly expand the de- velopment and implementations of standard methods for taking and ana- lyzing environmental samples. For many variables, sampling and analyt- ical methods are sufficiently well de- veloped and understood such that standardization of practice in their use, calibration, and data reduction methods could be accomplished in the near term future. This situation is particularly true for data taken to de- termine compliance of emissions or ambient conditions with legislative or regulatory standards. There are differences between various coun- tries in the standards that are set and therefore differences in what varia- bles are measured as well as how the measurements are to be made. How- ever, it is an area where active inter- national efforts at developing more uniform standards and measurement practices could yield important shared environmental data similar in

However, for many important en- vironmental variables, the methods of measurement are still an area of active research and the applications of these methods in the field or on real samples still are in the devel- opment and testing stage. Thus, standardization is not possible. It is possible, however, to enhance the utility and exchangeability of these research data by encouraging re- searchers to develop and apply rigor- ous quality assurance problems as an integral part of any method devel- opment effort. In addition the quali- ty of documentation also needs to be improved so that subsequent users of the data can fully determine how the experiments were made, what efforts were made to insure the data quality, and how the data were manipulated to reach the stage at which they are now. Furthermore, there is a critical need to make existing data more ac- cessible to the environmental science community. Many times it is difficult or impossible to know that data have been taken, are available, and could be employed to test hypotheses, as inputs to models, to compare with other studies of analogous systems, etc. It was suggested that there should be the development of a cen- tral directory in which information regarding the existence of data sets, what was measured on what environ- mental systems/materials, and how to get access to those data. As part of

this directory, there could be an indi- cator of the quality of data docu- mentation. Previous workshops2V3 have been held to discuss the devel- opment of systems to give quality in- dicators to the documentation. To determine the quality of the data it- self would be an overwhelming task, but it may be possible to evaluate the documentation that accompanies the data and as such would be a useful addition to a data director.

The problem of international com- patibility is an important one. Im- provements in the utility of expen- sive data gathering efforts by making data more credible and more easily distributed would be of enormous help to the understanding of complex environmental systems.

References 1 GSF, Improvement and Harmonisa-

tion of Environmental Measurement, Report from Gesellschaft ftir Strahlen- und Unweltforschung mbH, Mun- then, 1985.

2 CMA, Workshop on Data Quality In- dicators: Summary Report and Recom- mendations, Feb. 10-12, 1982, Gaithersburg, MD, Chemical Man- ufacturers Association, Washington, DC, 1982, pp. 61.

3 CMA, Workshop on Data Documenta- tion Quality Indicators: Summary Pro- ceedings and Recommendations, Chemical Manufacturers Association, Washington, DC, 1984.

Professor Philip K. Hopke is at the Insti- tute for Environmental Studies, I005 W. Western Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, U.S.A.

meeting report

Analytica 86 - the Conference

A report on the 10th International Exhibition with International Con-

Although biotechnology and genetic engineering are playing increasingly

important roles, Analytica is still a centre for the entire field of modern analytics. The scientific program consisted of 10 symposia on analyti- cal methods and applications, an ex- hibition of about 120 posters, the An- alytica Forum with more than 70 lec- tures from the exhibiting industry, and the display ‘Analytica Historica’,