European Journal Celebrated

SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING

Chemists from around the world attended a symposium in Strasbourg, France, on April 15 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Chemistry – A European Journal, the first issue of which was published in April 1995.

The symposium, “Stimulating Concepts in Chemistry,” was held at the city’s Institute of Supramolecular Science & Engineering (ISIS). The program included lectures by six eminent chemistry professors on topics as diverse as molecular electronics and switches, metal nanoparticles, transition-metal carbene complexes, probing the properties of single molecules using scanning probe microscopy and other techniques, total syntheses of natural products, and the future of chemistry. The speakers on these topics were, respectively, J. Fraser Stoddart, University of California, Los Angeles; Günter Schmid, University of Essen, Germany; José Barluenga, University of Oviedo, Spain; Frans C. DeSchryver, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium; Steven V. Ley, Cambridge University, England; and George M. Whitesides, Harvard University.

During the opening of the symposium, ISIS Director—and founder—Jean-Marie Lehn received an “Award for Service” from the European Association for Chemical & Molecular Sciences. Lehn, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1987, was the first chairman of the journal’s editorial board.

Chemistry – A European Journal was born out of discussions at a conference in Munich in 1993 between Lehn, Heinrich Nöth, and Peter Gölitz. Nöth was president of the German Chemical Society (GDCh) at the time, and Gölitz is editor of GDCh’s flagship journal Angewandte Chemie.

The major objective of Chemistry – A European Journal is to be “European in spirit and international in appeal.” It is published by Wiley-VCH and jointly owned by 14 chemical societies in Europe including GDCh and the French Chemical Society.

The journal has grown rapidly over the first 10 years, according to Neville A. Compton, who has been the journal’s editor-in-chief since 2002. “In 2004, we published over 6,550 pages, 10 times more than in 1995,” he notes. “Our main criterion for acceptance of contributions is and always will be their quality. There are no geographical targets or restrictions.”

The most prolific authors in the journal are Stoddart, who has had 50 papers published, followed by Lehn (44 papers), and K. C. Nicolaou, chemistry professor at Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, San Diego (30 papers).