Volume 38, Issue 3-4

The Past President of IUPAC continues to represent IUPAC after serving as President of the Union by dealing with scientists and organizations around the world, speaking at conferences, contributing to new initiatives as a member of multidisciplinary task-driven committees of Associated Organizations, and in day-to-day interactions with colleagues, students, and business partners. An important continuing role for the Past President is to serve as the chair of several committees of the IUPAC Bureau.

Guatemala, “the place of many trees”, is a small country in Central America with a rich history and biodiversity. Its most visible exports are fruits and flowers; sugar cane and coffee being a source of national pride.

The end of 2015 was the deadline that 189 countries gave themselves to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a list of eight goals that were agreed upon and approved by the UN after the Millennium Summit in year 2000. Despite some legitimate criticism, the MDGs were revealed as an important tool towards building a more equitable and sustainable world. Yet our planet still faces many challenges. In September 2015, the UN approved a new set of 17 goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aiming to develop and implement strategies to create “The Future We Want”; strategies that 192 countries agreed upon to work together towards a more sustainable planet [1].

Chemists are passionate people. We are passionate about chemistry, about our identity as chemists, and about the potential of chemistry and chemicals to make positive change in the world. When we hear people talking negatively about chemistry, we feel under attack, and we worry that the public don’t understand us.

The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF), located in Philadelphia, PA (USA), opened an exhibition in the fall of last year entitled Science at Play . According to CHF, this is the first major exhibition to focus on chemistry sets. On display are a broad spectrum of fascinating and colorful miniature scientific laboratories for children, part of CHF’s collection of more than two hundred and fifty science kits and toys.

Progress in science has always been driven by data as a primary research output. This is especially true of the data-centric fields of molecular sciences. Scholarly journals in chemistry in the 19th century captured a (probably small) proportion of research data in printed journals, books, and compendia. The curation of this data from its origins in the 1880s and for most of the 20th century was largely driven by a few organisations as a commercial and proprietary activity. The online era, dating from around 1995, saw much experimentation centred around the presentation and delivery of journals, but less so of the data. The latter evolved, almost by accident, into what is now known as electronic supporting or supplemental information (SI), associated with journal articles. [1] That there was still a general problem in science was revealed by the “Climategate” events in 2009, where a lack of access to the data on which climate models are based induced all manner of unfortunate conspiracy theories. [2] These events catalysed a change in policy at, amongst others, UK research funders. One outcome of this change was seen in May 2015 with the introduction of new research data management (RDM) requirements for funded researchers. This centred around the precept that primary research data should be made openly available [3] and coincided with the evolution of the open science tripod of open data, open access articles, and open science notebooks. [4]

The 2016 IUPAC-Richter Prize in Medicinal Chemistry has been awarded to Dr. Michael J. Sofia. Dr. Sofia received this award in recognition of his outstanding creative contributions to the invention, discovery, and development of the novel antiviral drug sofosbuvir (Sovaldi™) as a treatment for the cure of hepatitis C virus infection. It was approved in 2013. This new drug and its combinations provide high cure rates in infected people.

On 14 December 2015, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) awarded leading chemistry researchers from around the world with grants to support research in the field of green chemistry under a joint PhosAgro/UNESCO/IUPAC Green Chemistry for Life Grant Programme. The event took place during the 4th UN Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board Meeting and the Congress of UNESCO Chairs in Saint Petersburg.

Research in green chemistry and allied areas in biochemistry, geochemistry, biotechnology, ecology and healthcare give young scientists ample opportunity to demonstrate their inventiveness and provide important input to sustainable development. With this in mind, the Green Chemistry for Life Project was launched in 2013 by UNESCO’s International Basic Sciences Programme (IBSP) and PhosAgro, the largest producer of phosphate-based fertilizer in Europe, in close cooperation with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). The program recently completed two separate calls:

The Executive Editorial Board of Polymer International and the IUPAC Polymer Division are pleased to announce Professor Hoogenboom as the winner of the Fifth Polymer International – IUPAC award.

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of Professor Ernest Maréchal on 9 January 2016, at the age of eighty-four. Between 1993 and 2008, Ernest Maréchal was deeply involved in the activities of the IUPAC Polymer Division (formerly the Macromolecular Division) and of the Subcommittee on Polymer Terminology, and has led or contributed to six IUPAC Recommendations, amongst others on chemically modified polymers and source-based nomenclature. Ernest Maréchal was a graduate of Ecole Normale Supérieure (Cachan, France), with a degree in Physics (Aggrégation). He received his Doctorate degree from the University of Paris in 1965, specializing in the chemistry of cationic polymerization and was immediately appointed full Professor at the University of Rouen. In 1976, he joined the University Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (UPMC, Paris), where he developed research studies on the mechanisms of cationic polymerizations and polycondensations and on the chemical modification of polymers, establishing close relationships with the polymer industry. He was behind the discovery and development of thermoplastic elastomers, now commercialized by Arkema under the trade name Pebax. His last research works were devoted to pioneering studies on enzymatic catalysis in polymerizations (1989-2001). During his career, he acted as Head of the departments of physical chemistry (1978-1980) and macromolecular chemistry (1985-1992) at UPMC and as Head of the molecular and macromolecular physical chemistry branch of the National Committee for Research of CNRS (1983-1987). He authored or co-authored more than 300 research papers and has supervised more than 100 PhD studies. He was awarded many scientific prizes, including the Silver Medal of CNRS, the Pierre Sue Great Prize, and the Lavoisier Medal of the Société Chimique de France. Ernest was a great figure in polymer science, a leading scientist whom his numerous students will never forget, a man of culture, full of humour, and a warm and faithful friend who will be sorely missed.

In a series of Glossaries related to terminology in toxicology and published in Pure and Applied Chemistry (see commentary [1]), common names of substances were used, accompanied to varying degrees with the systematic IUPAC chemical name. In the most recent Glossary of Terms in Neurotoxicology [2], however, it was mandated that all substances referred to in the glossary should be accompanied, at some point, by the IUPAC name. While use of IUPAC names should be obligatory in original research papers, this short article is intended to open debate on the necessity of their use in glossaries where the reader is looking for guidance to meaning, and where perhaps hundreds of substances (some of them very complex natural products with correspondingly complex names) are included. Is a glossary a guide to meaning, or a source of definition? Does a formal name, intervening between a physical structure and its mention in a glossary entry, advance or obscure the goal of the reader?