A Conference Like No Other

This time next week, about 125 researchers in organic chemistry and related fields will gather in a mountain resort near Lucerne, in Switzerland, for the 40th EUCHEM Conference on Stereochemistry. For five days, they will listen to unhurried lectures and participate in animated discussions in an atmosphere of unabashed gentility and traditionalism.

More popularly called the Bürgenstock conference, this scientific meeting is one of the most highly regarded, especially in Europe. It is well-known for attracting scientists who are pushing the envelope in the most exciting fields of the day and for fostering open, informed, and illuminating discussions on key topics. Its roster of lecturers reads like a who's who in chemistry, including numerous Nobel Laureates. (Conference programs from the first meeting in 1965 to last year's are posted at www.stereochemistry-buergenstock.ch.)

The program is not announced in advance. Even the lecturers, except for the first speaker, don't know when they will speak, according to Klaus Müller of Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, and a member of the conference's organizing committee.

The conference founder, University of Zurich stereochemist André S. Dreiding, instituted the practice. "We don't want a conference of listeners," he recalls explaining to colleagues in the early 1960s. "We don't want people who come only for specific lectures and won't be interested in any other lectures. We want people who come to participate, to discuss. That's why we call them participants, not visitors or listeners."

Everyone is expected to stay for the whole conference, to attend all sessions, and to use their free hours to view posters or engage in informal discussions. When people are invited who then "just sit around," they will not be invited again, says François Diederich of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, another member of the organizing committee. Even these days, when people are hard-pressed to commit a solid week to a meeting, rarely have participants bailed out early.

The stereochemistry focus reflects the interest of Dreiding. In the early 1960s, the theme was timely because the fundamental concepts and definitions of stereochemistry were just being formalized. "We soon realized that stereochemistry had enormous implications. We coined a saying: There is no chemistry without stereo," he says. "All chemistry, from biochemistry to inorganic chemistry to theoretical chemistry, is represented by this word." For this reason, the conference name has remained unchanged.

Always, the conference promises a program encompassing mainstream organic chemistry disciplines, as well as molecular biology, molecular medicine, biophysics, and materials design. Exactly how the week will unfold can be divined only from the identity of the conference president.

LAST YEAR, it was Herbert Waldmann, from Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology, Dortmund, Germany. Because of his research interests, it could be assumed that the chemistry/biology interface would be prominent in the program. It was.

Starting off the program was Roger S. Goody, a colleague of Waldmann's, who spoke on structural and mechanistic aspects of vesicular transport regulation. Ilme Schlichting, from Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg, Germany, followed. She described her work in characterizing intermediates in the catalytic cycles of cytochrome P450 and nitric oxide synthases. Michel Rohmer, from Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, France, concluded the first day with a lecture on an overlooked pathway for isoprenoid biosynthesis in bacteria and plants.

The fourth day also was devoted to topics at the chemistry/biology interface. It began with Kazunari Taira of the University of Tokyo lecturing on RNA cleavage by ribozymes and short, interfering RNA. Next, Michael Famulok of the University of Bonn, Germany, described the utility of artificial nucleic acids called aptamers in distinguishing the functions of highly homologous proteins. Capping the day was a lecture by Kevan M. Shokat of the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco, about chemical tools for deciphering kinase signal transduction (C&EN, March 21, page 45).

The prominence of topics at the chemistry/biology interface did not mean exclusion of organic synthesis, synthetic methods, catalysis, and advanced materials. The second day was devoted to synthesis and catalysis, with lectures by Jonathan A. Ellman of UC Berkeley; Matthias Beller of Leibnitz Institute of Organic Catalysis, Rostock, Germany; Matthew D. Shair of Harvard University; and others. Synthesis also was the focus of the fifth day, which featured Henk Hiemstra of the University of Amsterdam and Larry E. Overman of UC Irvine.

On day three, new materials were center stage, with lectures by Atsuhiro Osuka of Japan's Kyoto University and Harry L. Anderson of England's Oxford University.

THIS YEAR, Alain Krief, from the University of Namur, Belgium, is the conference president. Because he is a synthetic organic chemist, next week's program may be expected to emphasize synthetic strategy, methodology, and reaction mechanisms. It will not be an organic chemistry meeting, however, he says. "Otherwise, it will be too specific."

In 2006, Bernhard Kräutler, from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, will be conference president. His primary interest is the interfaces of organic or structural chemistry with life and materials sciences. He expects that the 2006 program will be "fairly broad."

Participants appreciate the broad programming. Robert Wade, a research fellow at Pfizer, attended the conference for the first time last year. He likens the experience to a liberal arts education: "Liberal arts makes you more rounded and appreciative of the world as a whole," he says. "You never know what can be applied to your job. [The conference] gives you a better appreciation of the fields around you so that you can anticipate events."

Miljenko Dumic´, a process R&D chemist at Pliva Research Institute, Zagreb, Croatia, has participated more than 10 times since 1989. Much of what he learns is not directly related to his job, he says. "I would not purposely read about, for example, protein folding, enzyme crystallography, or polymer electronics. The conference spreads my scientific horizons."

Peter Gölitz is another regular participant. As editor of Angewandte Chemie, he says, it is not practical to go to a meeting focusing on a specialized topic for a whole week. "Here, I get talks from structural biology and chemical biology to materials and synthesis."

Bürgenstock is also a good place to spot potential hot topics, Gölitz says. He recalls, for example, an Angewandte Chemie article that resulted from a lecture at this conference: the 1989 review on starburst dendrimers by Donald A. Tomalia, then with Dow Chemical. In the late 1980s, dendrimers were not a hot topic, Gölitz says. After Tomalia lectured at Bürgenstock in 1987, "I invited him to write a review. After we published the review, the field took off. That review was quoted again and again."

The unusual length of the sessions--one hour of lecture followed by a half-hour discussion--allows a careful introduction to topics and enables the uninitiated to follow along, comments Schlichting, a biophysicist.

E. Peter Kündig, a chemistry professor at the University of Geneva, recalls how "thrilled" he was by the lecture by Rockefeller University's Roderick MacKinnon on potassium ion channels during the 1999 conference. "It was in an area that I had never read about," he recalls. The lecture was "superb; everyone was amazed." Four years later, he notes, MacKinnon won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Even those who work in fields not typically discussed at Bürgenstock can be pleasantly surprised, as the experience of Karl Wieghardt of Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry, Mulheim, Germany, shows. His research is centered on coordination chemistry of transition metals and bioinorganic chemistry. Last year, he delivered the final lecture after sitting through almost five days of lectures about "stuff that was not of real relevance to me."

Nevertheless, Wieghardt says, he got "a very good idea of where the scientific excitement is right now. I now know what other people are trying to achieve, where they are, what methods they use, and what intellectual problems they face." This knowledge is important, he says, because he works in a field that is intrinsically interdisciplinary. In fact, after the conference, he talked with some industry representatives he met at Bürgenstock about the possibility for collaborative work. "They discovered from my lecture that we are chasing the same sort of things."

The tone set by the president makes the conference different from year to year. Yet, according to frequent attendees, it has a reassuring constancy due largely to traditions instituted early in its history and zealously guarded by the organizing committee.

This committee of four Switzerland-based chemists--who jokingly call themselves the gnomes of Bürgenstock--consists of Diederich, Kündig, Müller, and Hans-Beat Bürgi, University of Bern. They take care of all arrangements. They select the conference president, who largely determines the program. They decide which applicants will be invited to participate; the number of participants is usually limited to 120.

They say that the choice of conference president is based on scientific stature and regional considerations: The practice has been to select someone from a different European country every year.

Being named president of the conference is an honor, Waldmann says. He considers it equivalent to a major prize. "It's one of the highlights in a scientific career, at the very least in Europe," he says.

Considering the conference's prestige and the imperative to maintain its reputation, "it's a big responsibility and a big honor to be president," Kräutler says.

Speakers must meet three criteria, the organizing committee says: Can they fill a whole hour of lecture? Are they good speakers? Can they stimulate discussion?

Being invited to lecture is a mark of distinction. Last year, for example, Wieghardt began his lecture by saying, "If you don't win the Nobel Prize, speaking at Bürgenstock is the next best thing." Wieghardt admits this is an exaggeration, but it is also partly true because "it is difficult to get an invitation to attend, especially as a speaker."

BY TRADITION, speakers are invited only once, although exceptions have been made when the scientist's research has shifted in a major way. Last year, for example, Overman's lecture was his second; the first was in 1986. Although both lectures were on stereocontrolled constructions, in 1986 the focus was on heterocyclic natural products, and last year it was on all-carbon quaternary centers.

This practice gives the conference a big advantage, Diederich says. Gölitz concurs: "Every time you come here, there will be new speakers. I could not afford to go to a conference where the same people meet every year."

Through the collective expertise of the president and the organizing committee, the conference has gained a reputation for identifying exceptional scientists early in their careers. "Nothing is nicer when attending a conference than going back home with a feeling that you've discovered some rising star whom you had not been familiar with," Diederich says.

Not for lack of trying, the conference has had far fewer female than male lecturers. Last year, Schlichting was the only female speaker. Originally scheduled for 2003, she came in 2004 because an injury prevented her from coming the previous year. Otherwise, the 2004 program might have featured only male speakers.

"Sometimes we have more than one female speaker; sometimes we have none," Müller says. "Our first priority is the science. If we identify women who meet that criterion, perfect. Sometimes we can't."

Even when women are identified, they may not be available. Diederich suspects that top female chemists in the U.S. are overburdened. "They get put on every committee," he observes. "Most women who lecture here come from biology, where women have greater representation."

Organizing committee members Bürgi, Diederich, Kündig, and Müller were handpicked to serve by their predecessors. They in turn were handpicked by their predecessors, in a succession that goes back to Dreiding, whose initiative and leadership led to the first Bürgenstock conference in 1965.

Dreiding says his ideas about the conference started percolating in 1962 when he was a delegate to a meeting of the Council of Europe aimed at finding means to harmonize the disparate European university systems and the degrees being awarded. One attractive proposal was to convene educators from different countries and get them to study the curricula and make adjustments, he recalls. Dreiding thought this approach would not be effective. "You would get only people interested in education. They are not the people who do the research," he remembers explaining to his colleagues. "What you have to do is get together the best scientists and hope that as a side effect they would begin to be interested in each other and adjust their educational system."

With the backing of the Swiss chemistry community, the idea of a research conference was embraced by the Council of Europe, Dreiding says. In 1963, he received 33,000 French francs from the council to organize a conference. Industry pitched in with 30,000 French francs so that he could invite scientists from the U.S. and Japan. "The money from the Council of Europe was restricted to member countries," he explains.

To this day, industry's financial support remains a hallmark of the conference. Without that support, "we can't run the conference," Müller says. In return, donor companies are allocated participant slots that they can use as they wish. "Typically, participation from companies is regarded as a reward for their best people," Müller explains.

The conference also receives grants from the European Science Foundation and the Swiss National Foundation, which are used only to fund participation of young scientists, the organizing committee says.

With its emphasis on participation and open discussion, the conference has become a venue to challenge highly controversial studies. A famous example involved a 1994 paper by Guido Zadel, Eberhard Breitmaier, and coworkers at the University of Bonn. It claimed the use of a static magnetic field to achieve asymmetric synthesis in up to 98% enantiomeric excess (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1994, 33, 454).

"Nobody could believe the results. At the same time, the paper was fascinating," Kündig recalls. The conference invited the authors to speak in a special session, and Zadel came.

"He was grilled, but he didn't crack," Gölitz remembers. "The paper had many critics. By the existing laws of nature, the results were impossible."

Ben L. Feringa tried but could not reproduce the results in his lab at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. Within months, the work was exposed as a fraud, Kündig says. Although the fraud was not apparent at Bürgenstock, a lot of skepticism was expressed, he adds.

Another example occurred in 1973. According to Dreiding, Jiro Tanaka, at Nagoya University, in Japan, had reported that the absolute configuration of certain compounds determined earlier by the Bijvoet method of X-ray crystal analysis was wrong and proposed an alternative way to get the correct configuration (Spectrochim. Acta, Part A 1973, 29, 897). "The Bürgenstock conference invited him to discuss aspects of his analysis," Dreiding recalls. "He finally agreed at the conference that his idea was wrong."

For five days of programming, the speaker list is short. That's because only three lectures per day are allowed: two in the morning and one in the evening. By tradition, the afternoon is free.

Also by tradition, the third evening is reserved for a formal dinner followed by a concert. For a while, Dreiding says, the Swiss composer Hans Andreae provided the music and even composed pieces with chemistry motifs, such as "Double Helix," whose score shows notes in helical formation.

The musical fare depends largely on the preference of the conference president, Waldmann says. Last year's program, for example, began with a piece by Johann Sebastian Bach at Waldmann's request. Krief has not been as involved as others have been in planning the musical fare. "I'm very poor in music," he admits. Next year, Kräutler will put his stamp on the music. "It will be an interesting mix of European composers," he promises.

ANOTHER TRADITION is the humor lecture at the end of the fifth day, which Dreiding started in 1974. "I lectured on methine, CH. I synthesized it, polymerized it to all sorts of spherical structures. People took notes like mad," he recalls. It wasn't until he got "more and more extreme" that people realized it was a joke, he says.

In recent years, Müller has taken over this lecture. His style is to string together the themes of all the lectures in humorous, witty, and, sometimes, sarcastic ways.

In 40 years, little and much have changed. Dreiding's idea of the conference lives on. The traditions live on. Yet some strict rules have been relaxed, such as the rule that no one can sit at the president's table during meals unless invited. No longer are discussions dominated by well-established big shots; interactions between younger and older scientists are more open and relaxed than before, observers say. The organizing committee has been making great efforts to accommodate more young scientists, and more of them are speaking up.

Key to the conference's cachet is its site, the Bürgenstock Hotels & Resort, with its breathtaking views of Lake Lucerne, elegantly decorated public spaces, and inviting hiking paths. So esteemed is it that when the hotels were renovated in 1990, the organizers opted not to meet rather than go elsewhere.

Except for breakfast, meals are full-service, three-course affairs, complete with printed menus. Some evenings, participants can choose to dine at the resort's tavern for a convivial evening of wine, cheese fondue, and raclette, a Swiss favorite consisting of melted cheese served with potatoes and vegetables.

Anyone coming from outside of Europe must travel by train, boat, plane, and funicular. Neither easily accessible nor easily escapable, the site is ideal for keeping people together, as Dreiding intended. As Dumic´ puts it: "The conference brings the most recent scientific developments to one place in a relaxed, familiar atmosphere at the top of the hill. You cannot escape. You have to listen, discuss, and mingle at the meals. You have a feeling of belonging."