SCIENCE
The yearly round
Bernard Dixon
At this time of year, when many of us are thumbing through the glossy travel brochures or gawking at cut price Mediterranean beaches on the telly, scientists too are struck by the wanderlust. But not for them the acres of free literature and the Sunday travel supplements. Scientists are looking for something quite different. And they can usually find it — whatever their tastes — in a slim grey booklet called Forthcoming International Scientific and Technical Conferences. For this is the season when botanists and computer engineers, astronomers and endocrinologists, plan their global excursions for the year ahead. Forthcoming International Scientific and Technical Conferences (which used to come free from the DES and now costs E8 per annum from Aslib — but let it pass) is there to guide and beguile and seduce them in making their choice.
Judging by the current issue, 1972 will be a bumper year for the conferenceseeker, both at home and abroad. Scientists can take their pick from a staggering range of events. There's the Symposium on Blast Furnace Injection at Woolongong next month, the Congress of International Seed Crushers in Kyoto in May, and the Eleventh Congress of the International Committee of Onomastic Sciences in Sofia during August. There are mammoth meetings on mathematics in Moscow, space in Rome, and ball bearings in Solihull. For those with an iron constitution, there is the International Conference on Modern Trends in Activation Analysis and International Colloquium on the Activation Analysis of Micro-Quantities of Elements in Very High-Purity Inorganic and Organic Substances and in Biological Media, scheduled for Saclay in October. And if the expert fancies a rather less exhausting sojourn then he can visit Leeds in April for the Second Symposium on Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication.
One of the most intriguing puzzles about scientific congresses is how the organisers select their venues. It's easy enough, for example, to understand why Guelph, in Canada, should mount a symposium on the biology of the seal (August). It's obvious that Paris should hold the Fourth International Congress on Accidents and Traffic Medicine (September), and reasonable for Salt Lake City to play host to the Third International Conference on Chemical Vapour Deposition (April). But why is Philadelphia (in May) mounting.. an International Conference on Creep and Fatigue? How does Amsterdam find itself hosting the Thirtieth International Congress on Al coholism in September? Above all, choose Birmingham (July) for the First ternational Conference on Intelligence? There is, as with all good travel 11 ature, something for everyone in Ft corning International Scientific and re nical Conferences. For those with a t8 (sic) for the exotic, there is the national Conference on Tin Consurn0 to be held in London in March. The 5 Thin Films Conference on Interfa( and Surface Phenomena will appeal some (April in York), as will the gP Meeting on Slab Reheating, scheduled Bournemouth in June. But who in his I'll mind is going to travel to Budapest in II' May for an International Symposium, Soil Corrosion? (Does soil corrode?) thusiasts will feel obliged to leg it Goteburg in June for the Fifth lia° national Congress on Diseases of Colon and Rectum, but will doubtless qualms about going on to attend the Pll; Cranfield Fluidics Conference — held, 'I no apparent reason, in Uppsala the foil° t ing week. Here, though, we come to the real 0, of the conference game. Ostensibly, annual round is there to promote scielP intercourse — to catalyse the creative I ternational exchange of scientific infonl; tion between research workers. Not 8 ,1 of it. The main purpose of all those titles is to impress the university dept I ment or company board that Dr RV simply must go to that important c°,i ference in Las Vegas. Usually, authorities are forthcoming with " money only if Dr Jones delivers a paPer, the conference. Hence the transpare barmy spectacle of speaker after speall, mounting the podium and descriV reasearch results which they have 11'` lished in the scientific journals mon ago. In contrast to the more mod! domestic scientific meeting, at W11,1, results are usually reported before be'' published in the journals, international gresses, colloquia, symposia, and cool` ences rarely cover genuinely new sciend work of any importance. They are held, occasions for meeting the boys and asse' ing the local cuisine. With luck, the itinerant scientist, hav.°. once overcome the critical escape veloCi from his workbench, can spend most., the year on the conference circuit. At moment, one scientist I know is hatell' plans to go to Woolongong for Blast Iii, and arrive back in London in Octol! for Electrical Variable Speed Drives, tal(!', in conferences on Radiation Protecty (Bordeaux), Anatomy (New Orleans), Films (Venice), Drainage (Bulgaria), Rectum (Goteburg), Clay (Madrid), 511' and Ice (Ontario), and twenty-seven otlie on the way. Then back to the little grey booklet next year.
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