International Symposium on Green Chemistry
10-13 January 2001, Delhi, India
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More than 150 people attended this symposium, many of them coming
from abroad. Fifteen countries were represented, thus showing widespread
international interest in the subject.
The symposium was organized by Dr. M. Kidwai (Department of Chemistry,
University of Delhi, India), and Prof. James Clark (Department of
Chemistry, University of York, England, UK) served as the President
and Symposium Editor. The inaugural lecture was given by Prof. Clark
during an impressive opening ceremony.
Prof. Pietro R. Tundo, the Official IUPAC representative to the
symposium, presented greetings from IUPAC at the opening ceremony,
during which he reported on the existing IUPAC activities related
to green chemistry worldwide (see box below) and particularly in
the less-developed countries. The term "green chemistry",
as adopted by the IUPAC Working Party on Synthetic Pathways and
Processes in Green Chemistry, is defined as: "The invention,
design, and application of chemical products and processes to reduce
or to eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances".
Environmental protection has to have singular attention in India
because of the unprecedented development of that country. International
cooperation between the countries of the world will play a fundamental
role in the progress of green chemistry, and IUPAC itself may address
the progress toward a scientific and intelligent trend.
Main topics covered by the symposium included new clean reagents,
new organic syntheses, new environmental friendly polymers, catalysis,
process intensification, and biocatalysis. There were 7 plenary
lectures and 13 invited lectures. Selected lectures from the symposium
were published in the January 2001 issue of Pure and Applied Chemistry
(PAC, Vol. 73, No. 1, pp. 77203, 2001).
Research and educational networks operating in green chemistry
were also presented and include the following: Interuniversity Consortium
of Chemistry for the Environment (http://www.unive.it/inca),
UK Green Chemistry Network (http://www.chemsoc.org/gcn),
and Green Chemistry Institute (http://www.lanl.gov/greenchemistry).
Some
IUPAC Events Related to Green Chemistry
-
Founding of the IUPAC
Working Party on Synthetic Pathways and Processes in Green
Chemistry (Seoul, Korea, August 1996)
- International
Conference on Challenging Perspectives on Green Chemistry
(Venice, Italy, September 1997)
- Meeting
of the IUPAC Working Party on Synthetic Pathways and Processes
in Green Chemistry (Venice, Italy, October 1998)
- 13th
International Conference on Organic Synthesis (ICOS-13)
Minisymposium on Green Organic Synthesis (Warsaw, Poland,
1-5 July 2000)
-
Special Topic Issue and Symposium-in-Print on Green Chemistry
(Pure
and Applied Chemistry, Vol. 72, No. 7, July 2000)
-
Establishment of the Subcommittee
on Green Chemistry within Commission III.2 (December
2000)
- International
Symposium on Green Chemistry (Delhi, India, 10-13
January 2001)
- CHEMRAWN
XIV-Toward Environmentally Benign Processes and Products
(Boulder, Colorado, 9-13 June 2001)
- 38th
IUPAC Congress/World Chemistry Congress, Scientific
Program Theme on Environmental Chemistry and the Greening
of Industry (Brisbane, Australia, 1-6 July 2001) and IUPAC
Committee on Teaching of Chemistry, Satellite Conference
(Brisbane, Australia, 1 July 2001)
-
IUPAC Subcommittee on Green Chemistry Workshop
on Education in Green Chemistry (Venice, Italy, 12-14
September 2001)
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Expectations for the symposium among the political world of Delhi
were really high. Prof. Deepak Nayyar, Vice-Chancellor of the University
of Delhi, welcomed attendees on behalf of the University of Delhi,
and Dr. Sheila Dikshit, Chief Minister of the National Capital Territory
of Delhi, expressed her wish that the symposium would help chemists
to update Indian science with what is new on the international scene.
She declared herself to be strongly interested and expressed her
belief that Delhi development will require cleaner production and
management for a better environment. Hospitality and coordination
by the symposium organizers were excellent.
Prof.
Pietro R. Tundo
> Published in Chem.
Int. 23(4), 2001