The Chemical Congress, Las Vegas

Things that are about to go wrong. Things that already have gone wrong. Things that went wrong some time ago but are getting worse. These are the usual grist for this and most other editorial pages. So it is very pleasant for a change to be able to editorialize about something that went right. What went right is the Second Chemical Congress of the North American Continent. And it went right despite a handicap so severe that it could easily have caused cancellation of the entire affair. The handicap, of course, was the necessity of transferring the meeting and its exposition at the last moment from San Francisco to Las Vegas—a move that one wag likened to shifting from Sodom to Gomorrah. The congress was a joint effort of the American Chemical Society, the Chemical Institute of Canada, Asociacion Farmaceutica Mexicana, Instituto Mexicano de Ingenieros Quimicos, and Sociedad Quimica de Mexico. ACS had major responsibility ...