A Conference History

The first Dynamics of molecular collisions meeting was held in 1965 in New Hampton, New Hampshire and was chaired by Professor John Fenn.  Dr. Fenn was the 2002 Noble Prize recipient for his work on getting biological molecules into molecular beams.  The chairman of the second meeting was Professor John Polanyi.  Dr. Polanyi was the 1986 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on use and development of molecular beam scattering techniques.  Dr. Polanyi shared this Nobel Prize with Dr. Y. T. Lee of UC Berkeley who chaired the seventh Dynamics of Molecular Collisions meeting, 1978, that was held at Pacific Grove in California.  This meeting is held every other year to alternate with the Atomic and Molecular Interaction Gordon Conference in America and the Conference on.  This year will be the twenty-first meeting.

Attendance of the conference has been very international with a large contingent from Europe, the United Kingdom, and Asia typically attending.  Students, postdoctoral fellows and young scientists dominate the audience and the poster sessions are very well attended by both students and scientists.  This meeting is focused on the education and initiation of students into the filed of gas phase physical chemistry.  

Past support and sponsorship of this meeting has come from AFOSR, the Department of Energy’s Basic Energy Sciences Program, the U. S. Army Research Office, the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society, and several laser companies (Lambda Physics, Spectra Physics and Continuum). 

Table 1: The history of the Conference on the Dynamics of Molecular Collisions