00:00:30 It is my pleasure tonight to officiate the 25th anniversary of the journal, which we now call Inorganic Chemistry, which is the period of all of us, in one respect or another.

00:00:59 We have some distinguished guests here tonight. This is not our normal business meeting that we normally participate in, but tonight is very social.

00:01:10 And we have with us President and Mrs. George Pimentel, so we have higher management here.

00:01:19 We have past President, Bob Parry, and we have past editors, Bob Parry and Ed King, and we have past and present editorial board members out there, and we have some distinguished guests.

00:01:41 Two people come to mind that should be here, who could not be here. One is Henry Toddy. Henry Toddy had a vital role to play in the founding of this journal, as did John Baylor. Neither of these gentlemen could be here with us tonight. I'm sorry about that.

00:02:04 While I'm up here, I wanted to also point out we have two award winners with us tonight. Steve Whipper has just been announced he is the winner of this year's Monsanto Award in Inorganic Chemistry, and Hugh Shriver is the winner of the Distinguished Service in Inorganic Chemistry.

00:02:34 So there our editorial board also does some good research. And before we begin the seating, I think we ought to introduce three other people who are here who play a very important role in the journal production.

00:03:03 He's taking care of editors, basically. I'd like you to stand up. I'd like Rhea Reaver, my secretary, to stand up.

00:03:15 Rhea sees all the manuscripts before anybody else. She opens all the envelopes. She has all the heartaches. We get envelopes from India that have no envelopes left.

00:03:33 She organized tonight's party from a personnel point of view. Also with us tonight is Joan Williams.

00:03:48 Where is she, Joan? Stand up. Joan Case.

00:04:07 You can still stand.

00:04:15 So tonight the way we would like to do this, I'm not organized as you all know, so we're going to have some short talks.

00:04:36 And the first person I'd like to have come up and address this is Bob Perry. Then we'll have Ed King, and then of course Ben Mattel will talk to us.

00:04:47 Steve Lippert has to catch a plane, so we'll put him up here after that.

00:04:51 Then Gail Stuckey and her case, Bruce Driver, Ed Solomon, Mike Bowen, and anybody else who at that point has the spirit, they certainly need to perform.

00:05:06 It's like we're out of spirit, so we're going to leave it at that.

00:05:14 So anyway, without further ado, Bob Perry, please come up.

00:05:25 Tonight is not really a birthday party, and Ed Solomon is not a baby. He's not even an adolescent. He's 25. He or she, I don't know which.

00:05:35 He's 25, and I think the celebration is in order.

00:05:39 And Brim has identified a number of distinguished people who are here tonight.

00:05:45 And there are two folks that I would like to call your attention from an earlier era when I first appointed the editorial board.

00:05:54 One of them is Gene Brim, and the other one is Tracy Ball. Will you guys stand up?

00:06:05 Gene has contributed as much, I think, to the economy of the country as many individuals in the ACS.

00:06:13 Gene had his name on the original papers for an election or a sieve.

00:06:19 And as you well know, an election or a sieve has made a lot of difference.

00:06:25 A lot of money.

00:06:29 A lot of money is right.

00:06:32 And Tracy Hall was the first man to make Artificial Diets, which is a pretty good dinner again, too.

00:06:38 And a lot of people made money on that, too, but Tracy is just one of them.

00:06:44 I'd like to congratulate Brett and Herb and Steve and Ed and Jack for doing a very good job on editing the Journal of the Day.

00:07:00 It's a job that's done with integrity, it's done with skill, and it's done with a rare ability to keep both editors, referees, and authors and readers happy.

00:07:13 And that's a hard combination to do.

00:07:16 They've done a good job. I think they ought to be commended.

00:07:19 But I've got to tell you a story about editors. You know, they're kind of a strange lot.

00:07:24 I'm afraid I broke it there.

00:07:27 It so happens that a couple of fellows were up in the Napa Valley and got involved in one of these pollutant rides, you know,

00:07:37 and a pretty stiff breeze came in from the west and took them way, way from the chase crew.

00:07:42 So pretty soon they were lost when they got out of there.

00:07:45 They looked down and they couldn't see anything that they recognized, but they saw a guy walking along the road.

00:07:52 So they turned down their burner and went down and sort of hovered around this guy on the road.

00:07:58 They yelled out to him and said, where are we?

00:08:02 Well, the guy looked around like this, he didn't see anybody.

00:08:06 They yelled again, where are we?

00:08:08 He looked up, oh, you're up in the balloon.

00:08:12 And the scientist who was in the balloon turned to the attorney who was in it with him.

00:08:18 He said, you know, that guy's an editor.

00:08:22 How in the world can you say that? You don't know he's an editor.

00:08:26 He's absolutely clear. The information he gave us was 100% accurate, but totally useless.

00:08:37 I'm going to tell you a little bit about yes, because tonight, this is, you know, the Bible starts out.

00:08:44 For those of you who missed Sunday school last year, it starts out as, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

00:08:55 Our story starts a little different.

00:08:57 In the beginning, John Taylor managed to talk the ACS board into creating a journal for the purpose of presenting inorganic chemistry.

00:09:08 Now, how he did this is a big mystery to me, as it is how God created the universe, but that's another story.

00:09:18 To get to go there, Alvin Henry was given the job of implementing this ACS recommendation.

00:09:28 I was in that order, received a telephone call from Dr. Henry who said,

00:09:35 We would like you to come down to Washington.

00:09:39 That's a Disney land he's from.

00:09:43 Talk to us about what an inorganic journal should have in it.

00:09:49 Well, you know, he said it would be a small group of people, and he said this would be a good thing to do.

00:09:55 Well, I was a very naive fellow, and I swallowed the line all the way out.

00:10:02 And I got down there, and Alvin Henry said to me,

00:10:07 You know, this small group is what? That's you.

00:10:11 And the thing that you'd like to have you do is to edit this journal of inorganic chemistry.

00:10:18 Well, I was quite impressed with him, and I guess that's why I did what I did.

00:10:26 Even though I didn't have the foggiest idea of what you're doing when you start a journal,

00:10:30 but you can tell you're running it after it's been started.

00:10:33 But there was a young man on the staff at the time, and he didn't know that.

00:10:39 And they helped me a great deal.

00:10:42 Making me cover was one of the chores that they handed me right off.

00:10:49 He said to me, What do you want for cover?

00:10:54 I said, I don't know. I don't go around with five or six different covers in my pocket.

00:10:58 I said, I would like to have something which is bright, light, and simple.

00:11:06 He said, You know, you really ought to be a politician.

00:11:10 You can do this, which is absolutely meaningless.

00:11:15 So he had a number of people draw up some model covers.

00:11:20 One of them is the one that you are very familiar with today.

00:11:24 It simply had one important difference.

00:11:26 It had a small i and a small c.

00:11:30 Small i for inorganic chemistry and a small c.

00:11:33 Well, since the editor wasn't E.E. Cummings, I objected to this rather thoughtfully.

00:11:38 But I thought we ought to change it to a large i and a large c.

00:11:42 There was one lot of argument about it, but ultimately the change was made.

00:11:49 One of the things that surprised me when I started in this job was that there was considerable objection and considerable resistance.

00:11:59 I'm mentioning this to you largely because I think it is something which is at least one fairly serious note that any board has to recognize.

00:12:09 That is, one of the questions we were asked was,

00:12:14 Are you folks as inorganic chemists getting your work properly published in JCS?

00:12:19 It's a good question.

00:12:20 Oh, I should be able to talk about that.

00:12:22 I'm going to be quite honest.

00:12:23 The answer was yes.

00:12:24 Both inorganic chemistry is going to be published properly and effectively in JCS.

00:12:30 So why do you need a new journal?

00:12:32 Well, John Boehler was, I think, perceptive enough to see that JCS was under considerable pressure,

00:12:39 page pressure at that time, and he could see that there was going to come a time when it would be all on him.

00:12:46 The physical chemists had journal of physical chemistry, the journal of chemical physics, the organic chemists had JOC,

00:12:54 and the analytical chemists had analytical chemistry, and we had none.

00:12:59 And John's argument was quite persuasive.

00:13:04 But there's a deeper question involved here, and that is,

00:13:08 How much can you subdivide your subject matter to still maintain a viable journal?

00:13:15 And there isn't any easy answer.

00:13:17 What you have to do is you have to have a wise editorial board, a wise group of editors,

00:13:24 who know the area enough to tell you when you've divided past the point of no return.

00:13:30 I think we passed the first test when organometallic chemistry was proposed.

00:13:35 I think the inorganic community decided that this should be handled, and then wisely went along.

00:13:41 I think the time has been indicated by the judges.

00:13:44 How much more you can subdivide will have to be answered as the question comes up.

00:13:49 It doesn't mean you have to always say no.

00:13:51 If you say no, that's why the publisher flew in.

00:13:57 One of the things that I found was it was necessary to recruit papers.

00:14:00 I wrote to a lot of medical chemists, a lot of inorganic chemists,

00:14:04 and said, Send us your best papers.

00:14:06 And the community responded wonderfully.

00:14:08 I think we were all indebted to those people who helped do that.

00:14:14 But there were a lot of things that I tried that didn't work.

00:14:16 I'm going to finish with this in a minute here, but there were a lot of things that I tried that didn't work.

00:14:20 And one of them, fortunately, is in the area I'm told,

00:14:23 During the development of the Navy project on high-energy fuels,

00:14:32 the carboranes were discovered in a couple of industrial labs,

00:14:39 and the papers were sent in and promptly accepted.

00:14:42 And I thought I would really be a very clever editor

00:14:46 and have the nomenclature for this series of compounds laid out by IUPAC committees

00:14:54 and have the whole thing ready to go.

00:14:56 So I sent the descriptions of papers to members of the IUPAC committee on nomenclature

00:15:04 and said, Write me an article.

00:15:07 I'll put that article in front of the papers, the carborane papers.

00:15:11 Then we'll have this nomenclature business all cleared up.

00:15:14 There won't be anything like elements, unquote and so on,

00:15:19 whatever the names are at the end.

00:15:21 And there won't be questions such as the arguments about numbers, periodic table,

00:15:27 all that kind of thing, you know.

00:15:30 We'll have it all laid out in advance.

00:15:32 Everybody will agree to it.

00:15:34 So that was all done.

00:15:36 I was congratulating myself.

00:15:38 And then there was a young fellow down at the University of California at Riverside

00:15:44 who was rapidly becoming Mr. Carborane.

00:15:48 This guy was really a very bright guy, a very productive guy, a very likable guy,

00:15:55 a guy who really was dedicated to the proposition the IUPAC rules were no good.

00:16:03 Boy, did you know if you use those IUPAC rules,

00:16:08 I can't name these compounds after old shoes, after tennis rackets,

00:16:14 after spiders, after baskets, after jugs, all this kind of thing.

00:16:21 So he said, You can't do this to me because it's going to stifle my creativity.

00:16:29 Well, you know, I didn't expect this kind of thing.

00:16:31 It sort of overpowered me all of a sudden.

00:16:34 So we retreated.

00:16:36 Today, we have some cationides, some dipolides, some canastides, and some more.

00:16:44 How about that, Fred?

00:16:47 That's all you have.

00:16:49 Those are all Spanish.

00:16:52 Those are all Spanish.

00:16:55 The IUPACs have a proper Spanish representation.

00:17:00 Well, it didn't take me long to decide that the editorship needed to change,

00:17:08 and I told Dick Belknap that he wanted to get out of this thing.

00:17:14 And Dick said, Well, you can't get out because you help us find a replacement.

00:17:19 So I gave him three names.

00:17:22 One of them, the first name I gave him was a fellow named Ed King.

00:17:27 I gave him quite a lot of propaganda about what a fine fellow Ed was.

00:17:32 He's a very good writer.

00:17:34 He talks like a scientist.

00:17:36 And so it didn't take very long until they called me up and said,

00:17:40 Now, we want you to invite this man over to Ann Arbor to see what it's like to be an editor.

00:17:50 To see what has to be done in the editorial area.

00:17:53 So I called Ed up.

00:17:55 He came over and had a pleasure to stay.

00:17:57 And then that evening, my wife and I took Ed out to dinner.

00:18:01 After that, we took him home.

00:18:03 On the way home, Marcia looked at me and she said, He's such a nice man.

00:18:08 Does he know what you're trying to do to him?

00:18:12 Ed, you're going to answer that question.

00:18:16 Well, I suspect the five years I was editor was a period in which the journal was sort of getting rolling.

00:18:30 The five years I was editor of the journal, there was five issues a year each year.

00:18:40 And the number of pages went from 1,800 to 2,700.

00:18:45 Right now, last year the journal published 48.

00:18:56 Bob Taylor, who was an associate editor with Bob Perry, helped out during the transition period for several months.

00:19:06 But there was a period, the last half of 64 and 65 months, there wasn't an associate editor anymore.

00:19:18 It was sometime during this period that Piper, Aaron Piper,

00:19:25 Piper was on the phone.

00:19:28 I didn't think he was on the phone.

00:19:30 Piper was on the phone.

00:19:31 I wrote him a letter.

00:19:32 It's something on a paper.

00:19:35 It says, Your editorial staff can handle this.

00:19:39 Your editorial staff was rude.

00:19:42 I mean, it was a long, long journal.

00:19:46 It was supposed to be long.

00:19:48 I'm not taking sympathy.

00:19:57 I'm going to build up to how Fred got into the act.

00:20:04 Fred must have come to Boulder in the middle of the winter in 65, 66.

00:20:14 I recall getting back to the airport and was on that ride to the airport that I asked him if he'd like to be an associate editor.

00:20:22 I assume I had gotten the approval to get to Boulder.

00:20:26 Not that Fred was going to turn in the group to handle Piper.

00:20:32 But in any case, I refresh my memory by looking at the mastheads.

00:20:38 Fred appeared on the masthead in April of 66.

00:20:43 And then January of 67, Jim Ivers appeared on the masthead.

00:20:49 And I think that, in fact, the journal has a good reputation for publishing high-quality,

00:20:58 crystallographic entries.

00:21:03 Was Jim in the group?

00:21:05 Well, I think Jim got us off on a good course.

00:21:09 And that tradition, I guess, has prevailed.

00:21:14 Now, by the time I stepped out, the journal did, in fact, get more associate editors than we still have.

00:21:27 And I think this period of Fred being an associate editor led to him being an editor.

00:21:35 And, you know, it's terrific.

00:21:38 Bob had the job two years.

00:21:41 Fred had the job five or five years.

00:21:43 Fred hasn't had the job in 18 years.

00:21:46 What kind of an equation?

00:21:49 Well, Fred doesn't have a very simple equation.

00:21:55 Now, do you want to take notes?

00:21:59 N raised to the Nth power plus 1.

00:22:05 For N equal 1, it's equal to 2.

00:22:10 For N equal 2, it's equal to 5.

00:22:12 And for N equal to 3, it's 28.

00:22:16 Fred, you have 20 years.

00:22:24 Those in the VCS office have to handle N equal 4.

00:22:27 It's 257.

00:22:33 That's all I have to say.

00:22:42 Five more years.

00:22:45 I think we'll see.

00:22:47 Our next speaker is the boss, the president of the American Chemical Society here.

00:23:01 I want to say, first off, how much I am pleased to be here tonight to share the celebration with you.

00:23:10 At that point, I have to say that I'm sorry to tell you that I'm bringing lots of problems to you tonight.

00:23:19 I was asked by Ed, or maybe by Fred, maybe told, for the better way,

00:23:26 to say that I should not be serious with my comments this evening,

00:23:31 but I have a serious matter on my mind that I want to bring before you.

00:23:36 That's one of the unpleasant things I want to mention,

00:23:40 and that has to do with the periodic table.

00:23:49 The periodic table, of course, deals with carbon and the rest of the elements.

00:23:53 The rest of the elements are inorganic,

00:23:55 and so I feel that this group is a very important group in considering the proposed new periodic table.

00:24:04 So even though this is a serious topic, I feel obliged to bring it up now.

00:24:11 My second problem is a matter of credentials.

00:24:16 You can imagine that I feel a little uncomfortable here, particularly at this podium.

00:24:23 Many of you don't realize that I'm an inorganic chemist.

00:24:27 So I feel obliged to spend some time first establishing my credentials,

00:24:33 so that then you will be willing to pay attention when I get to the real business of my talk,

00:24:39 which is the periodic table.

00:24:41 Even mentioning the periodic table gives me a bit of a problem.

00:24:46 I always used to use interest in the periodic table as a similarity test.

00:24:57 Unfortunately, I find myself perhaps not passing that test.

00:25:05 In any event, now I have to go back to my early days to show you why.

00:25:10 I know that Ed realizes that I'm an inorganic chemist, and most of you don't.

00:25:15 It began, really, in an undergraduate course at UCLA,

00:25:19 and this really is probably where my interest in the periodic table began,

00:25:25 because we had an assignment that each person had to pick an element that was,

00:25:31 you know, any one out of eight, then 92 elements,

00:25:35 and run a report on how the atomic weight, which was now accepted, had been measured.

00:25:42 Well, at that particular time as an undergraduate,

00:25:45 the course that was giving me the most trouble was German.

00:25:50 So I said, I'm going to pick a Blasen element where I will be reading eight,

00:25:55 and so I looked at all the periodic tables, and I picked columbium.

00:26:00 I figured, well, columbium, that's going to be amazing.

00:26:04 The first paper I read that had anything to do with atomic weight

00:26:09 indicated that columbium was also called niobium,

00:26:12 and niobium was the German name in all of the atomic weight work that was done.

00:26:19 I felt that was, that indicated there were problems with columbium.

00:26:26 So I thought that the evidence of this problem well before I was diagnosed.

00:26:32 In any event, I didn't do well in math.

00:26:35 I wasn't doing well in lots of things, as a matter of fact.

00:26:38 The organikers could tell I was not good with materials,

00:26:41 but organics, I just didn't have a good enough memory.

00:26:44 I remember one time, Bill Young, who was the instructor in one of my undergraduate courses,

00:26:49 said, come and tell us the trouble with you is you think too much.

00:26:52 Don't you ever smell the columbium?

00:27:00 Nevertheless, I established myself with some,

00:27:04 what I like to think is quite outstanding work in organic chemistry.

00:27:09 I worked as an undergraduate research student for Professor Kroll, Bill Kroll,

00:27:15 and he was interested in osmium tetroxide

00:27:18 and was doing chromous titration with osmium tetroxide.

00:27:23 So it was my job to do accurate, precise titrations with chromous.

00:27:30 And my work there, I'm not a devotee of citation index and that sort of thing,

00:27:35 so I can't really say,

00:27:37 but my guess is that if you looked at citation index,

00:27:40 you would find that my notebook is quoted there more often than anyone else

00:27:44 showing that oxygen leaks through heavy wall rubber tubing.

00:27:51 You cannot keep chromous titrate constant.

00:27:55 That was my major accomplishment there.

00:27:57 Another bit of my participation as an organic chemist

00:28:05 was associated with a test I took in quantitative analysis.

00:28:09 And I had done research as well as a freshman in chemistry,

00:28:14 and this particular test I neglected to do any study for.

00:28:18 And Professor Kroll asked if the test could balance an equation

00:28:23 which involved I3 minus.

00:28:25 And I just crossed this off the notes at the time.

00:28:33 That's not well received.

00:28:39 These things came back to haunt me.

00:28:42 It turned out that my first job was to go up north

00:28:47 and work on the Manhattan Project,

00:28:50 which I did for a year where I met Ed King.

00:28:53 And I worked for Bob Conant,

00:28:56 and I suppose his credentials would be acceptable to you.

00:29:00 And one of the problems he put me on was a problem that was very troublesome at the time.

00:29:07 Of course, the whole business of the project was to figure out

00:29:10 how to get plutonium out of that mess of all of those fission pockets

00:29:17 across the whole periodic table.

00:29:19 And it turned out that under certain circumstances,

00:29:23 precipitates would maliciously appear,

00:29:27 and they didn't seem to do anything very sensible or reproducible.

00:29:32 But the problem was the precipitate would carry along all of the plutonium.

00:29:37 So Conant indicated we were going to look into this,

00:29:41 and it turned out to be neobium pentoxide.

00:29:51 Well, it turned out to be kind of a humorous thing

00:29:56 because, in fact, that was my first publication.

00:30:00 Oh, I should say right now that one of my primes is that

00:30:03 I've never had a manuscript rejected by the Journal of Inorganic Chemistry.

00:30:08 It's all published.

00:30:15 As it turned out, we discovered that neobium pentoxide was indeed

00:30:22 a very good way to establish plutonium from a solution.

00:30:27 We got so good at it that it turned out that it was patented

00:30:33 as a possible way of purifying plutonium.

00:30:36 And so my first publication is on the purification or extraction of plutonium

00:30:42 with neobium pentoxide purification.

00:30:46 Again, my guess is that many of you haven't read this.

00:30:52 Perhaps in part because it was secret for about 15 years.

00:30:57 So no one ever used this process.

00:30:59 It was a secret for a long, long time.

00:31:02 Well, then I3- came back to me.

00:31:06 I never quite could accept that there really was an I3-

00:31:11 and I've got zero on my balance of that equation,

00:31:15 and I didn't feel that was quite fair.

00:31:17 And so I decided that there must be something wrong with Paul I3-.

00:31:25 It's largely his fault.

00:31:27 It doesn't cause me to say there is no I3-.

00:31:31 So that got my interest into a molecular orbital.

00:31:35 I wasn't doing well in organic chemistry.

00:31:38 I wasn't doing well in inorganic.

00:31:40 So I became a chemist.

00:31:43 So I decided I'd look into the molecular orbital understanding of I3- and HF3-.

00:31:52 And I found this was a very comfortable way to describe both of those species.

00:31:58 And so I decided to write a paper about this.

00:32:02 And I wrote a paper in 1951.

00:32:06 I'm sorry to say, if you're looking for me.

00:32:09 And before I sent it in, I tried it out on Bob Connick.

00:32:14 Now, Bob Connick and I were playing squash once a week at the time,

00:32:18 and it was on the way down to the gym.

00:32:21 And I told him about this paper.

00:32:24 And those of you who know Bob probably know his answer.

00:32:27 He said, look, if this theory is any good, make some predictions.

00:32:31 Now, think about it.

00:32:32 I'm 5'8", he's 6'5".

00:32:34 He's nine inches taller than me.

00:32:36 He tells me to do something.

00:32:39 After the game, I went back to my office and I said, well, what am I going to predict?

00:32:45 I came to the unpleasant conclusion that I had to predict that there were inert gas compounds

00:32:52 and that they would have the structure of the polyhalogen, the polyhalide.

00:32:59 And so I put that into the paper.

00:33:01 And it's published in 1961.

00:33:03 And my guess is it's read as much as my notebook about it.

00:33:06 It's covered with rubber tubing.

00:33:11 In any event, that represents what I can lay before you as my credentials as an organic chemist.

00:33:17 And now I want to turn to the periodic table.

00:33:21 My guess is that here I'll antagonize some of you because I'm not really for the periodic table.

00:33:31 I'm actually useful as the president of the society.

00:33:34 I must be.

00:33:39 I confide in you that I feel that one doesn't change the periodic table very often.

00:33:47 And that if you're going to do it, you should do it right.

00:33:50 That is, go all the way.

00:33:52 Now, I thought of one approach, for instance.

00:33:58 You know the naming of the transuranics?

00:34:01 I think Bob calls it the Honequot notation.

00:34:05 I think that might have been considered for the entire periodic table.

00:34:09 Why shouldn't we be completely logical about that?

00:34:13 It, of course, is developed from the number of the elements.

00:34:18 If you've tried to pronounce some of those names,

00:34:20 you realize that you can say those names without opening your mouth.

00:34:26 It's not really the proposal I want to lay before you.

00:34:37 I don't think this is an advocate.

00:34:39 I'm merely indicating that there are other things that haven't been considered yet.

00:34:44 And this is my proposal.

00:34:48 When you come right down to it,

00:34:51 the proposal that's been made is to change the numbering of the columns, you know.

00:34:56 But my proposal is that we identify the elements in succession by letters of the alphabet.

00:35:03 So hydrogen would be A, helium would be B, lithium would be C.

00:35:09 And that's one.

00:35:13 Now this is the real genius of that proposal.

00:35:17 When you get to 26, then double A, double B.

00:35:22 I'm proud of that.

00:35:28 Now the names would be directly connected to the symbol.

00:35:33 Think how simple that would be.

00:35:35 Aseum, B, Baseum, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C.

00:35:42 That's lithium.

00:35:45 E, easy-um. E, easy-um.

00:35:49 Now, I realize that you're an international problem.

00:35:52 We would say aseum.

00:35:55 Europeans would say posseum.

00:35:57 I propose aseum.

00:36:01 Everybody will agree.

00:36:03 Now, I'm just going to try a couple of these.

00:36:05 I'm going to show you this is really quite a practical thing.

00:36:08 Calcium chloride.

00:36:10 That comes out of the t-zone, that Q-zone.

00:36:20 Phosphorus.

00:36:22 I like the cereal.

00:36:25 Phosphorus pentoxide.

00:36:27 Diozium pentahide.

00:36:31 Magnesium chloride.

00:36:33 Enium izide.

00:36:36 You can see that this really should have been bottom-up.

00:36:42 What I am seriously going to do is to appoint an ad hoc committee

00:36:49 to reopen the question of the IUPAC.

00:36:53 Now, in a notation, I shall, of course, submit my suggestions of other alternatives

00:36:58 and see whether we can't at least put in a little more time to think about this

00:37:04 before it becomes increasingly stony.

00:37:08 What I want to remind you of is some of the advantages.

00:37:12 You realize the problem of the notational thing.

00:37:15 If there's one system used in Europe and another system used in the United States,

00:37:21 and if you use their system, we're disadvantaged.

00:37:24 If you use our system, they're disadvantaged.

00:37:27 I have proposed here tonight to you a system that's advantageous to no one.

00:37:36 I think you deserve your seriousness.

00:37:46 Our next speaker is an associate editor of the Feynman Campaign Chemistry.

00:37:52 Thank you, Fred.

00:37:54 Tom Lear would be proud of you.

00:37:58 Leave it to a physical chemist to find a way to justify the equation A plus B.

00:38:06 Anyway, I have very brief remarks.

00:38:08 I'm already about five minutes late for my ride to the airport.

00:38:12 I just want to give a few anecdotes about what inorganic chemistry as a journal means to me.

00:38:17 I began graduate school in 1962, and the journal began in 1961,

00:38:22 and I thought that was particularly appropriate that I had the opportunity to be able to read every paper

00:38:28 that was ever published in a journal that was made in my field, inorganic chemistry.

00:38:34 I must admit, I don't actually own the first volume of that volume.

00:38:41 Jim Ivers was mentioned as a crystallographic editor.

00:38:44 As a young faculty member, I was led through crystallography by Jim.

00:38:50 I remember one of the comments he wrote to me along with referees' reports,

00:38:56 that the editor's role was to keep authors from making fools of themselves.

00:39:02 He was not sure that he had already exceeded his limits on my behalf in that regard.

00:39:10 I do remember Jim, but it's true.

00:39:14 He actually did a lot for us.

00:39:17 Inorganic chemistry is an international symbol of recognition.

00:39:21 Bob talked about the cover.

00:39:23 I'm sure that there are many of you who have said,

00:39:26 well, I'll be at the airport at such and such a time,

00:39:29 and if you carry a yellow journal in your hand,

00:39:32 you'll be sure to be recognized by me, or vice versa.

00:39:35 I will carry the journal.

00:39:37 I don't think many other fields can claim that.

00:39:40 Probably not many other journals.

00:39:44 I'm actually very proud to be part of the editorial team here.

00:39:49 I was first solicited, I think, by Herb K.

00:39:53 at the Gordon Conference.

00:39:55 We had discussions about my joining the editorial advisory board then.

00:39:59 There came a time when it was quite a serious question

00:40:02 about what one would do about bioinorganic chemistry,

00:40:05 whether we would have a journal in that field or not.

00:40:09 It was about the time when the Organometallic Journal was forming

00:40:13 and sort of splitting off in part,

00:40:16 and the editorial board decided,

00:40:19 particularly at the urgings of myself, Harry Gray,

00:40:23 and Ken Raymond at a meeting,

00:40:25 I remember that it was important to have a sub-area of bioinorganic chemistry.

00:40:29 I, of course, thought either Harry or Ken would do the associate editorship.

00:40:34 They probably thought one of the other two would do it,

00:40:37 but ultimately it fell on me.

00:40:39 So we made a modest beginning

00:40:42 and tried to focus attention on bioinorganic chemistry through the journal.

00:40:48 I think we're making some progress.

00:40:50 We've doubled the number of papers in the past couple of years.

00:40:53 We're not at the point where we're going to split off yet,

00:40:56 but I think it's made some progress.

00:40:59 So I really do have to go to the airport,

00:41:01 and that's really the few comments I wanted to say.

00:41:03 I think that Fred, 18 years, I didn't realize it was that long,

00:41:07 has done a wonderful job.

00:41:09 It's been a great pleasure.

00:41:11 He's almost a new kid.

00:41:13 I think Ed is the new kid on the block.

00:41:15 In working with the staff at ACF,

00:41:18 they've been very supportive.

00:41:20 Celia McFarland was supportive and understanding of me as an author

00:41:24 and I think even more so as an editor,

00:41:26 and I'm sorry that my wife, Judy, couldn't be here tonight,

00:41:29 but she's still recovering from various troubles.

00:41:33 That's really all I wanted to say.

00:41:35 My few moments, and excuse me as I have to try to catch my breath.

00:41:39 Thank you.

00:41:46 There you go, Erin Wong.

00:41:49 Your next speaker is a former Nimbus Association editor,

00:41:54 and that's Gaylen Sturteigh.

00:41:56 Gaylen was our traveling associate editor.

00:42:10 Corrugated.

00:42:13 Thank you, you did a great job.

00:42:21 Now tell us about it.

00:42:27 I'm going to talk primarily and very briefly about,

00:42:31 on behalf of the Inorganic Division,

00:42:34 in two years we're going to have another anniversary,

00:42:38 which will be the anniversary of the,

00:42:40 at least the 50th anniversary of the Inorganic Division,

00:42:43 which will be celebrated.

00:42:45 Of course, the Inorganic Division has been in bed,

00:42:49 or at least it's apparent, of course, in organic chemistry.

00:42:53 And it's benefited greatly from that relationship.

00:42:57 We now have in the, at the ACS meeting,

00:43:00 something like, I think it's about 100 more papers in the Inorganic Division,

00:43:05 which happens to be organic chemistry.

00:43:08 Maybe that's because they smell more than they think.

00:43:18 But the division is growing very rapidly,

00:43:20 and keeping control of such a division,

00:43:22 and what it produces in the way of publications,

00:43:24 is really quite a challenge as far as the area.

00:43:27 We're like someone who would like to keep it growing in a new direction,

00:43:30 maybe better than three.

00:43:31 And that we're, there are many branches growing out,

00:43:34 and keeping these in line,

00:43:36 that's been going on, it's quite a job.

00:43:39 And certainly, Fred has done a tremendous job in this respect,

00:43:42 and I'd also like to say thank you to them,

00:43:45 and to the ACS for their assistance,

00:43:49 and for their cooperation and collaboration,

00:43:51 along with the sociologists.

00:43:53 Thank you again.

00:43:59 Now our next speaker is a close colleague,

00:44:03 and colleague of UCLA.

00:44:08 We eat lunch together frequently.

00:44:12 We share a number of common opinions.

00:44:15 No one else sits with us.

00:44:19 I'm floating out of line.

00:44:23 I'm now referring to my good friend, Herb Gates,

00:44:27 who will tell us something very serious about Virginia.

00:44:32 This is a bad news.

00:44:41 When Fred said he'd like volunteers to say something about our 25th anniversary,

00:44:47 I volunteered to talk about the influx of manuscripts

00:44:52 that are published by foreign authors.

00:44:54 So, thanks to the R&D Department of Books and Journals,

00:44:58 I don't know if you know these guys exist,

00:45:00 but they have computerized the entire journal operation.

00:45:03 We have a computerized peer review,

00:45:05 and computerized files,

00:45:07 and it is rather easy once we go back on the database

00:45:10 to get these kind of numbers.

00:45:12 There's a person here with us in the State Department

00:45:15 that is responsible for this.

00:45:17 Now, we were not computerized in 1962,

00:45:19 so I actually had to go to the journal

00:45:22 and look at article by article

00:45:25 where the foreign papers came from.

00:45:27 We had six foreign manuscripts

00:45:29 out of something like 191 total manuscripts published.

00:45:33 That's 3% of the journal.

00:45:35 I don't know how many foreign manuscripts were rejected.

00:45:38 That's not available in published literature.

00:45:42 But, to take it a little more forward now,

00:45:46 starting in 1983,

00:45:48 which is where the database really came into play,

00:45:51 Fred is getting approximately

00:45:53 between 1,200 and 1,300 manuscripts per annum.

00:45:57 That's about 100 manuscripts a month.

00:46:00 40% of those are from foreign authors,

00:46:04 and I'm about to give you some of the statistics

00:46:08 of how they fare as far as rejections or acceptance.

00:46:12 These numbers, I guess, are classified.

00:46:15 The mistakes should not be revealed

00:46:17 until maybe 50 years from now.

00:46:22 Now, it turns out that our domestic manuscripts,

00:46:28 we only have something like 12% rejection.

00:46:31 1983, 12% domestic papers were rejected.

00:46:34 1984, only 10% were rejected.

00:46:37 In 1985, around 11% were rejected.

00:46:40 So, it looks like we're doing pretty well.

00:46:43 Our domestic authors can read our journal.

00:46:45 They can see what the standards are,

00:46:47 and if they think the paper doesn't meet up to it,

00:46:49 they do their own selection,

00:46:51 and they send it to other journals

00:46:53 like the Journal of Inorganic and Nuclear Chemistry.

00:46:56 And the successors are our other competitors.

00:47:00 My apologies to Malcolm.

00:47:03 Maybe you can do better, Malcolm.

00:47:06 But people do pre-select.

00:47:08 People do pre-select,

00:47:09 and we don't have a lot of trouble

00:47:11 if they know what we want.

00:47:13 For foreign-based manuscripts,

00:47:15 the following rejection ratio,

00:47:17 about 30% in 1983,

00:47:19 20% in 1984,

00:47:21 33% in 1985.

00:47:24 So, the foreign authors,

00:47:27 maybe they can't make the comparison,

00:47:29 or maybe they're just going to try to go fishing

00:47:31 like Jim Coleman loves to do,

00:47:34 and see what we can pull out.

00:47:35 And we have a lot of trouble with the manuscripts.

00:47:37 Because of that, I'd like to say

00:47:39 this brings up the point.

00:47:41 We shouldn't forget the people who review for us.

00:47:43 They are really the journal.

00:47:45 The editors can't really do the job

00:47:48 with 1,200 manuscripts a year.

00:47:50 And it does put an extra burden on reviewers

00:47:52 to first make the decision

00:47:54 whether there's something interesting in the thing.

00:47:56 Besides, if there is,

00:47:58 maybe some of them can help us with the English.

00:48:00 If not, that's what we have,

00:48:01 the people that were credited right at the beginning

00:48:03 of this gathering,

00:48:05 Leah, Joni, and Joni,

00:48:07 and I don't know how many other guys

00:48:09 abused their wives this way,

00:48:11 but these people in the editorial office

00:48:15 do go over the manuscripts that way.

00:48:20 So, we're proud of the internationalization

00:48:23 of the journal,

00:48:24 even though it means it's a bigger effort,

00:48:26 and there's bigger pain involved with it.

00:48:28 Nobody likes to have to reject the works.

00:48:30 It's more work to reject the works

00:48:31 because you have to tell a guy why it's no good.

00:48:34 On the other hand,

00:48:36 I think the fact that the journal is international

00:48:40 is a sausage break pie to us,

00:48:42 and we hope it's also a sausage break bread to us.

00:48:45 If international people publish,

00:48:47 then maybe international libraries

00:48:49 will put it on their shelves.

00:48:51 And we've seen this development happen over the years,

00:48:57 and we welcome foreign manuscripts.

00:49:00 We have a few foreign librarians with us tonight,

00:49:03 and though it means a little more work,

00:49:05 we're happy to do it.

00:49:06 Thank you very much.

00:49:07 Thank you very much.

00:49:13 On the subject of publication,

00:49:17 I think we ought to congratulate Mary Ann

00:49:20 and Celia and their co-workers

00:49:24 who have got us on the schedule.

00:49:27 You are the best-performing biblical publication

00:49:31 between the best of all publications

00:49:33 of the APM as of September.

00:49:36 Very good.

00:49:37 Thanks a lot.

00:49:43 Now,

00:49:45 next speaker is

00:49:46 Sue Traver,

00:49:50 who is a member of our charter board.

00:49:54 And an award winner.

00:49:55 And an award winner.

00:49:56 Right.

00:49:57 I'm the one that's not qualified to talk

00:49:59 to anyone else.

00:50:00 I'm either an editor or a president of a society

00:50:02 or a homeowner.

00:50:04 But you're a Northwesterner.

00:50:10 Well, the one point I did want to make

00:50:12 is the way inorganic chemistry really charted

00:50:15 the progress of our field.

00:50:17 It was, I think,

00:50:19 a very important publication

00:50:23 in terms of the progress of our subject.

00:50:25 It focused a lot of attention on inorganic chemistry.

00:50:28 It focused on inorganic chemistry at the time

00:50:31 and it was a very respectable profession I guess.

00:50:39 I started in 1950

00:50:41 in the inorganic chemistry industry

00:50:43 and the research momentum was very great at that time

00:50:47 but I feel there were many parts

00:50:49 in which it wasn't particularly good

00:50:52 in the first class.

00:50:54 But that's changed a lot.

00:50:55 I think one of the things

00:50:56 inorganic chemistry itself

00:50:58 I think happened to bring along with me

00:51:00 page one of volume one of inorganic chemistry

00:51:05 and it illustrates the progress in this area.

00:51:08 It's a paper by my colleague Greg DeSolo.

00:51:11 I don't know how he managed to get

00:51:13 to put me on there but

00:51:14 I'll let you know.

00:51:20 I'm on the end of it.

00:51:23 In any case,

00:51:24 it's a clever little paper

00:51:26 in which he describes the synthesis

00:51:28 of a nitroso compound

00:51:30 and the thing that led to this synthesis

00:51:32 was a mechanistic idea that he developed earlier.

00:51:35 But if you read through the paper

00:51:37 it's very simple.

00:51:38 He uses infrared spectroscopy

00:51:40 in terms of structure

00:51:42 and that's about it.

00:51:44 I don't know if he could publish that with me.

00:51:47 You would probably have to have

00:51:49 synthesized three compounds.

00:51:51 You would probably have to have

00:51:52 three crystal proteins.

00:51:53 That's a Jim Ivers standard.

00:51:57 It's remarkable

00:51:58 the look of the change

00:51:59 in the scientific material over the years.

00:52:02 We now have ten more students here

00:52:05 that need to be available to us.

00:52:08 Credit to the editorial people

00:52:10 that this has come about.

00:52:12 General Woody Hanna kept the record.

00:52:15 I think a lot of it

00:52:17 is due to the recent efforts

00:52:18 of Fred and Irv

00:52:20 blocking it up

00:52:21 and getting it to the primary areas.

00:52:23 We've got a lot of energy

00:52:24 across the table.

00:52:26 Any other physicists

00:52:28 can tell us what they think.

00:52:30 They are showing the breadth of our mission.

00:52:33 Thank you.

00:52:34 Thank you.

00:52:41 Our next speaker

00:52:42 is an associate editor.

00:52:45 Animals are papers

00:52:47 that are physical in nature

00:52:49 theoretical in nature

00:52:51 and can solve.

00:53:04 Let me start by congratulating Fred

00:53:07 and all the other individuals

00:53:09 who contributed to inorganic chemistry

00:53:12 over the last quarter century.

00:53:17 Being the associate editor responsible

00:53:19 for articles on physical aspects

00:53:21 of inorganic chemistry

00:53:23 I thought I would take this opportunity

00:53:24 to make some comments

00:53:25 concerning the field of physical

00:53:26 and inorganic chemistry.

00:53:29 These comments are given

00:53:30 on a somewhat personal level

00:53:32 as the field has played

00:53:33 a most important role in my life

00:53:35 over the last 15 years.

00:53:38 I came to physical and organic chemistry

00:53:40 from a work on chemical physics direction

00:53:43 and then I spent much of my graduate career

00:53:45 studying the first six wave numbers

00:53:47 in the first course

00:53:48 that you wouldn't be excited to take

00:53:49 because it's a D-5-9-8 ion

00:53:51 in an octahedral fluoride environment.

00:53:55 I did a lot of my graduate research

00:53:58 on the research of others

00:53:59 in the late 60s and early 70s

00:54:02 and when all returned to Hamiltonia

00:54:04 came together in a chemically correct way

00:54:07 one could get an extremely accurate agreement

00:54:09 between electronic structure

00:54:11 and electronic texture

00:54:12 and thus a fundamental insight

00:54:14 into the interaction

00:54:15 between a metal ion

00:54:16 and its ligand environment.

00:54:18 It was also clear to me at the time

00:54:19 that the basic concept

00:54:21 of inorganic chemistry

00:54:23 and ligand field theory

00:54:24 were well understood

00:54:25 on simple high symmetry systems.

00:54:29 About the same time

00:54:30 I had an opportunity

00:54:32 to attend an extremely interesting meeting

00:54:34 organized by Don McCormack,

00:54:36 my Ph.D. advisor.

00:54:37 The title of the meeting

00:54:38 was the exchange interaction

00:54:40 between ions and crystals and molecules.

00:54:43 The participants of the meeting

00:54:45 were all interested

00:54:46 in the electronic structure

00:54:47 and bonding of metal complexes

00:54:49 and covering the spectrum

00:54:50 from theoretical physicists

00:54:52 like Johnny Estado, for example,

00:54:54 to material scientists.

00:54:56 The participants of the meeting

00:54:58 also included some very distinguished

00:55:00 students in inorganic chemistry.

00:55:02 Harry Gray, Carl Bauhaus,

00:55:03 and Tom Spiro, Larry Dahl, Peter Day,

00:55:06 and others who all participated.

00:55:08 And it was at this meeting

00:55:09 that I decided

00:55:10 that I was going to become

00:55:11 a physical inorganic chemist.

00:55:13 And this wasn't because

00:55:14 Harry Gray at the meeting

00:55:15 announced his self-imposed decision.

00:55:17 It wasn't worth a new tennis ball.

00:55:23 But because I was fascinated

00:55:24 by the incredibly interesting

00:55:26 molecules being studied

00:55:28 and by the goal

00:55:29 of correlating electronic structure

00:55:31 with important physical properties

00:55:33 and particular chemical reactivity,

00:55:35 the more I've learned

00:55:36 about physical inorganic chemistry

00:55:38 since 1972,

00:55:39 the more fascinating it has become.

00:55:42 This is particularly the case

00:55:43 in recent years

00:55:44 as inorganic chemistry

00:55:45 has aggressively evolved

00:55:47 in many interdisciplinary areas,

00:55:49 such as bioinorganic chemistry,

00:55:51 material science, and metallurgy.

00:55:53 Now, this background

00:55:55 leads me to make two comments

00:55:57 concerning the present.

00:55:58 What I feel is the present status

00:56:00 of physical inorganic chemistry.

00:56:03 My first comment

00:56:04 is to address the scientists

00:56:06 who are not physical inorganic chemists

00:56:08 but who feel that the interpretation

00:56:09 of the results of physical method

00:56:11 is in some way subjective

00:56:14 or open to handling.

00:56:16 And my response to these scientists

00:56:17 is that this is simply not the case.

00:56:19 As I've tried to emphasize,

00:56:21 the concepts of physical inorganic chemistry

00:56:23 are extremely well-defined

00:56:25 and simple systems

00:56:26 and just waiting for application

00:56:27 of more competent technologies.

00:56:29 However, it is also the responsibility

00:56:31 of the physical inorganic chemists

00:56:33 to make every effort

00:56:34 to develop these concepts clearly

00:56:36 and to make these available

00:56:37 to the general inorganic community.

00:56:40 My final comment

00:56:41 is addressed

00:56:42 to the physical inorganic chemists,

00:56:44 and here I really must say

00:56:45 that I wish I could sense

00:56:46 more excitement and coherence

00:56:47 in our field as a whole.

00:56:49 We have the basic principles now

00:56:51 for the analysis

00:56:53 of most centrifugal and magnetic effects.

00:56:56 There are many important classes of molecules

00:56:58 waiting to be studied by physical method,

00:57:01 where an understanding electronic structure

00:57:02 will make a major contribution

00:57:04 toward an understanding reactivity.

00:57:08 We, the physical inorganic community,

00:57:10 should go for it

00:57:11 in a very concerted and positive way.

00:57:13 Inorganic chemistry, our journal,

00:57:15 has been the focus of our field since 1962.

00:57:19 I feel we should make the next 25 years

00:57:21 of physical inorganic chemistry

00:57:23 published in our journal

00:57:24 as exciting as the first.

00:57:26 Thank you.

00:57:27 Applause

00:57:34 The last speaker,

00:57:35 the final speaker,

00:57:37 is Mike Vaughan.

00:57:45 Mike is in charge

00:57:48 of the books and journals,

00:57:51 publications,

00:57:52 and all of this stuff.

00:57:55 He paid the bill.

00:57:56 He was charging it.

00:57:57 So hang on,

00:57:58 I forgot about that.

00:57:59 He's the counter manager,

00:58:01 he hasn't said.

00:58:03 Here he is.

00:58:07 I might as well admit

00:58:08 I'm a chemical engineer.

00:58:11 That's the way it is.

00:58:15 However,

00:58:16 after one hour of these particular talks

00:58:18 and some folks are looking

00:58:20 a little bit more rigid than others.

00:58:27 Move around a little bit

00:58:28 because we've got another 20 minutes to go.

00:58:32 We've got five minutes on this.

00:58:34 I know that.

00:58:36 On this sheet it says 20 minutes.

00:58:40 As a change of pace,

00:58:41 I should tell you that

00:58:42 there's a group of people

00:58:43 who have been on the wings

00:58:46 of the stage

00:58:47 to do this exciting drama

00:58:48 of inorganic chemistry

00:58:50 in its 25 years of life,

00:58:52 and those of us

00:58:54 who are on the staff

00:58:56 of the American Chemical Society

00:58:58 who, we like to think,

00:59:00 at least nurture and support

00:59:02 this originally struggling publication

00:59:06 in its present preeminent state.

00:59:09 We've worked with it,

00:59:12 for it,

00:59:13 and on behalf of it

00:59:15 since 1962.

00:59:17 Now,

00:59:18 it's been mentioned

00:59:19 that this particular publication

00:59:21 is growing in pace.

00:59:22 It started as a quarterly.

00:59:24 Dr. King said

00:59:25 that it was five times a year.

00:59:26 One publication I've ever heard of

00:59:28 came out five times a year.

00:59:30 And it's monthly in 1964,

00:59:32 bi-weekly in 1983,

00:59:34 and the whole damn thing

00:59:35 is exploding fantastically.

00:59:38 As far as we're concerned,

00:59:39 it's nothing but unrestrained expansion of trouble.

00:59:42 Are you giving us an alien position?

00:59:49 We've observed,

00:59:50 as we've heard from the editors

00:59:51 over the years,

00:59:52 that as the editorial pages grew,

00:59:55 the editors also grew visibly

00:59:57 in sagacity and judgment

00:59:59 and in wit

01:00:01 and in the appreciation of fine wines.

01:00:08 Dr. Hoffman is referred

01:00:09 as the third editor

01:00:10 and perhaps the fourth editor

01:00:11 and fifth editor as well

01:00:12 for the next 200 years.

01:00:18 As his interest

01:00:19 in the same gourmet

01:00:22 such as wines declines,

01:00:24 the Gallup associate editors

01:00:26 filled in as best they could

01:00:30 to the best of their poor ability.

01:00:34 You know,

01:00:35 for those of us on the staff,

01:00:36 the advisory board dinner

01:00:38 of Inorganic Chemistry

01:00:39 is one of the highlights of the year.

01:00:41 In good years,

01:00:42 you know,

01:00:43 when the sun shines

01:00:44 and the grapes are good,

01:00:45 there are two meetings

01:00:47 and they come to both of them.

01:00:50 For many years,

01:00:51 the truth is

01:00:52 that we discouraged

01:00:54 or dissuaded

01:00:55 the female staff members

01:00:56 of the American Chemical Society

01:00:58 from coming to this meeting,

01:00:59 especially with the coarse

01:01:01 and rival talk

01:01:02 of atomic coordinates

01:01:05 and the abundance

01:01:06 of excitement states

01:01:07 that we might have.

01:01:09 Dr. Grogan herself,

01:01:11 who's our most senior

01:01:13 female staff member,

01:01:15 has been permitted

01:01:16 only for the last ten years.

01:01:20 It's not in her name.

01:01:22 That's right.

01:01:23 Yes,

01:01:24 we've observed over the years

01:01:25 that Inorganic Chemists

01:01:26 not only had a fine,

01:01:27 dedicated scientist

01:01:29 but decidedly human beings

01:01:31 with all the foibles

01:01:32 and qualities and delights

01:01:34 that being a human being

01:01:35 brings with it.

01:01:37 We've delighted over the years

01:01:38 in many a key discussion

01:01:40 among the Inorganic Chemists

01:01:42 over their favorite subject,

01:01:44 which is, of course,

01:01:45 page charges.

01:01:49 Page charges,

01:01:50 in my view,

01:01:52 rank with a thumb screw

01:01:56 and ill-defined materials

01:01:58 as Inorganic Chemists'

01:02:00 least favorite thing.

01:02:03 My colleagues and I recall, well,

01:02:05 one particular discussion

01:02:06 about ten years ago

01:02:08 at which the first editor

01:02:10 of this publication,

01:02:11 Dr. Perry,

01:02:13 single-handedly had to fend off

01:02:15 the present editor

01:02:17 and his host of friends

01:02:21 at an advisory board meeting

01:02:25 at which page charges

01:02:26 were discussed.

01:02:27 Dr. Perry, at that time,

01:02:29 had moved on

01:02:30 to better things

01:02:32 and was president of the society.

01:02:35 I was just about to tell him

01:02:36 he was trying to persuade

01:02:38 these folks

01:02:39 that page charges

01:02:40 were a really good thing.

01:02:43 He fought a valiant

01:02:44 but losing battle.

01:02:46 Eventually, as you've heard,

01:02:48 the American Chemical Society

01:02:49 saw the light

01:02:50 and relieved Inorganic Chemistry

01:02:52 of the onerous obligation

01:02:54 to try to collect page charges,

01:02:56 which they were collecting

01:02:57 from two people at that time.

01:03:01 And in 1982,

01:03:03 they were suspended.

01:03:06 I should point out

01:03:07 that as a humble chemical engineer,

01:03:09 I discovered that

01:03:11 Inorganic Chemists,

01:03:12 distinguished ones,

01:03:13 were definitely human.

01:03:15 First in 1973

01:03:17 at the Dallas ACS meeting.

01:03:21 At that time,

01:03:22 Dr. Hawthorne

01:03:25 was the recipient

01:03:26 of the ACS Award

01:03:27 in Inorganic Chemistry,

01:03:28 which was sponsored

01:03:30 not as Steve's Award,

01:03:32 I think,

01:03:33 but by Texas Insurance.

01:03:35 And you recall

01:03:36 in those days,

01:03:37 the ACS used to

01:03:38 trot that old award

01:03:39 with this immense line

01:03:40 behind this huge table.

01:03:42 And Dr. Collapso,

01:03:43 Dr. Rogers,

01:03:44 my colleague at the ACS

01:03:45 would call those days.

01:03:47 And I never met Dr. Hawthorne.

01:03:48 I saw him

01:03:49 and I was very impressed.

01:03:50 He was dressed up.

01:03:51 He had a beautiful tuxedo

01:03:52 and a beautiful shirt

01:03:53 and the whole thing.

01:03:55 And I'd recently been given

01:03:56 some new dailies

01:03:58 in the administration

01:04:00 of ACS journals

01:04:02 and I was a little shy

01:04:04 and so forth.

01:04:05 And I went about

01:04:06 for the ceremony

01:04:07 and I introduced myself

01:04:09 and I said,

01:04:10 Dr. Hawthorne,

01:04:11 I'm Mike Bowen

01:04:12 from the journals department.

01:04:14 And this huge,

01:04:15 this dapper individual,

01:04:16 this suave,

01:04:17 well-dressed man

01:04:18 turned around and he said,

01:04:19 Hey man!

01:04:20 He said,

01:04:21 you're the son of a gun

01:04:22 who's been sending me

01:04:23 all that paper.

01:04:27 That's the gist

01:04:28 of what he said.

01:04:32 About Bulgaria.

01:04:35 Yes,

01:04:36 oh yes,

01:04:37 the Bulgaria comic paper,

01:04:38 yes.

01:04:39 That was the paper

01:04:40 we used for two years

01:04:41 in inorganic chemistry.

01:04:42 That was experimental,

01:04:43 wasn't it?

01:04:44 It was experimental,

01:04:45 yes.

01:04:46 It had an advantage

01:04:47 of efficiency

01:04:48 in the paper we used

01:04:49 in inorganic chemistry

01:04:50 in 1975

01:04:51 in that you could read

01:04:52 both sides

01:04:53 at the same time.

01:04:57 Yes.

01:04:59 But we're not all bureaucrats

01:05:00 in the books and journals

01:05:01 that they do right now.

01:05:02 I am,

01:05:03 I have to admit.

01:05:06 Now the best wishes

01:05:07 that we send to you

01:05:08 for the next 25 years

01:05:09 or 50 years

01:05:10 or 100 years

01:05:11 or 200

01:05:14 that come from

01:05:15 not only me

01:05:16 but my associate

01:05:17 Charlie Birch

01:05:18 over there

01:05:19 who's taken over

01:05:20 the duties of sending you

01:05:21 all the paper you don't want.

01:05:23 Mary Ann Brogan

01:05:24 and Mary Scanlon

01:05:26 and Franklin Menezes

01:05:27 our new staff member

01:05:29 and not least

01:05:30 Celia McFarland

01:05:32 in the department

01:05:33 in Columbus

01:05:35 who read your papers

01:05:36 slightly more intelligible

01:05:37 than they started off.

01:05:41 Lauren Garson

01:05:42 and Richard Love

01:05:43 and some of the other folks

01:05:44 in the R&D department

01:05:46 who render all the editors

01:05:48 electronically insulated

01:05:49 from one another

01:05:53 and our friends

01:05:54 in marketing

01:05:55 Sid Kistner

01:05:57 and her colleagues

01:05:58 who bring the message

01:05:59 of inorganic chemistry

01:06:00 to the unwashed

01:06:01 in Northern California.

01:06:05 All these folks

01:06:06 wish you all the very best

01:06:07 and they've enjoyed

01:06:08 working with you

01:06:09 and they wish you

01:06:10 all the best.

01:06:11 Good luck.

01:06:19 Unwashed

01:06:20 in Northern California.

01:06:22 That's a real word

01:06:23 for himself.

01:06:35 I remember that

01:06:36 19th century

01:06:37 awards dinner

01:06:40 that was quite a affair

01:06:42 and we were lying

01:06:43 to Jeff

01:06:46 and I think it was

01:06:47 George Whittington

01:06:49 somewhere

01:06:50 ahead of me

01:06:51 behind me

01:06:52 and I got his diploma

01:06:55 and we had a little

01:06:56 mix up

01:06:58 and I ran into you

01:07:00 and I had a bunch

01:07:01 of people

01:07:02 students

01:07:03 who followed me

01:07:04 all the way

01:07:05 from NBCLA

01:07:06 to Dallas

01:07:07 and UC Station

01:07:08 wagons

01:07:09 and we had

01:07:10 a bunch of parties

01:07:12 but I do remember

01:07:13 that day

01:07:20 I knew I had

01:07:22 I don't think

01:07:23 I'm going to last

01:07:24 10 years in this job

01:07:25 so you might as well

01:07:26 relax

01:07:28 I'm not going to take

01:07:29 this occasion

01:07:30 tonight to resign

01:07:33 that's not

01:07:34 that's a bad thing

01:07:36 but anyway

01:07:37 I think it's really

01:07:38 really neat to

01:07:39 have seen

01:07:40 the General

01:07:41 prosper

01:07:42 and change

01:07:43 his character

01:07:44 I really thank

01:07:45 the people

01:07:46 I didn't earlier

01:07:47 in the evening

01:07:48 I'm really quite thankful

01:07:49 for the support

01:07:50 that we have

01:07:51 as individuals

01:07:52 and as a group

01:07:53 from

01:07:54 ACF staff

01:07:55 and social

01:07:56 journalism

01:07:59 they make things

01:08:00 work

01:08:01 and do so

01:08:02 very well

01:08:03 and we have

01:08:04 first class

01:08:05 teachers

01:08:11 I think in

01:08:12 Seattle

01:08:13 we have C3

01:08:14 we have turkeys

01:08:16 we have

01:08:19 we have

01:08:23 that was their

01:08:24 response to our

01:08:25 rejection of

01:08:26 Dave's charity

01:08:28 I'm not going to

01:08:29 say anything

01:08:30 about that

01:08:31 immediately

01:08:32 but if you buy

01:08:33 two turkeys

01:08:34 you're on a six

01:08:35 percent budget

01:08:36 for turkey

01:08:37 parts

01:08:40 so let's start

01:08:41 on it

01:08:43 raise your hand

01:08:48 does anyone else

01:08:49 in the audience

01:08:50 feel moved

01:08:51 have a stare

01:08:52 if you want to jump

01:08:53 back

01:08:57 anyway folks

01:08:58 thanks for coming

01:09:02 I don't know

01:09:03 what the next

01:09:04 twenty five years

01:09:05 will bring

01:09:06 for Narragansett

01:09:07 I suppose we'll

01:09:08 spawn another

01:09:09 half dozen

01:09:10 journals

01:09:12 I hope so

01:09:13 if they're all

01:09:14 as much a

01:09:15 success

01:09:16 as the

01:09:17 Canada

01:09:18 Metallic

01:09:19 or whatever

01:09:20 thanks for

01:09:21 coming

01:09:22 see you all

01:09:23 later

01:09:24 thank you

01:09:25 very much

01:09:26 applause

01:09:27 applause

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01:09:51 applause

01:09:53 applause

01:09:56 applause

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