Volume 39, Issue 1

I am grateful for this opportunity to wish members of IUPAC bodies and adhering organizatins, fellows, affiliate members, and company associates a successful, fruitful, and healthy year in 2017. Many of us will meet in São Paulo, Brazil, in July, at the IUPAC General Assembly and the 46th World Chemistry Congress, for the first time to be held in South America, to discuss the directions of the Union’s activities as IUPAC is moving to its’ centenary in 2019.

According to IUPAC, “ Pure and Applied Chemistry is the official monthly Journal of IUPAC, with responsibility for publishing works arising from those international scientific events and projects that are sponsored and undertaken by the Union.” There is no doubt that PAC has and continues to achieve its goal of being “an authoritative and indispensable holding in academic and institutional libraries.”

Ironically, the IUPAC Gold Book includes no definition of the “Periodic Table”. Nevertheless, Chemistry International’s readership assuredly knows what the Periodic Table is, or at least, what it has been, since that perception might change in the future. If the conversation is to be about prospects beyond the element with atomic number Z = 118, two essential questions must be answered: Where are we going? How will we get there?

Building bridges between global thinking and local action was the tag line of the 2016 International Year of Global Understanding. [1] This provides an invaluable opportunity for chemistry organizations to rethink their roles and responsibilities in a global context. For IUPAC, its approaching centenary adds a further impetus to the continual quest for sustainability, relevance, and value. Chemistry organizations have a long tradition of helping to develop and promote the interests of the subject and its practitioners. In a rapidly changing world, what is their fundamental purpose, what should be their roles, and how can they refresh themselves to best serve the field and also society at large?

On 1 December 2016, the Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü and IUPAC President, Professor Natalia Tarasova, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) pledging to enhance cooperation to keep abreast of developments in chemistry, responsibility and ethics in science, and education and outreach.

On 28 November 2016, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) approved the name and symbols for four elements: nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og), for element 113, 115, 117, and 118, respectively.

An updated version of the Periodic Table has been released on 28 November 2016 which includes the recently added elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 and all standard and conventional atomic weights.

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women—25 November 2016, www.un.org/en/events/endviolenceday—the International Council for Science (ICSU) called for more effective strategies to promote gender equality and equitable access to all resources in the practice of science, notably in the area of field research, and to remove barriers to the full participation in science by women.

At an extraordinary General Assembly of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and General Assembly of the International Social Science Council (ISSC), held in Oslo on 24 October 2016, members voted overwhelmingly that the two organizations should merge. This in-principle decision followed a recommendation by the two organizations’ executives, setting the two councils on a trajectory to become one by October 2018.

As a young man, Peter Fogg won an open scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, where he read chemistry. After gaining a first class degree, he went on to do a doctorate under the supervision of J.D. Lambert. His thesis was on Ultrasonic Dispersion in Gases.