Stan Penczek and Emile Franta

Pioneering
It all started in the late 70’s with the European Science Foundation (ESF), in Strasbourg. The ESF, in its role to help develop specifically identified areas of scientific research in Europe, formed a commission devoted to Polymers, that was chaired by Piero Pino (at that time, professor at the ETH). The aim of this commission was to make an inventory of the laboratories working on polymers in Europe, and to organise meetings for the purpose of allowing European polymer scientists to meet in Europe rather than on a different continent. This commission was financed by the ESF for 3 years, after which another committee, chaired by Henri Benoît (from Strasbourg) was set up on Polymers at Interfaces. Several meetings were organised on this topic in different European countries for another 3 years, after which the ESF considered that it had given enough support to this theme, and that, should the subject be of importance, it ought to be organised on its own.

In 1986, a meeting was organised near Strasbourg, with the financial support of the ESF, that was attended by representatives of 16 European countries. Everybody agreed that polymers, research on polymers, both in industry and in academia were of great significance in Europe, where original research was actively pursued, and therefore deserved an organisation of some kind devoted to the topic: the Statutes of the European Polymer Federation were drafted and signed by all the participants. The chartered goal of the EPF was to co-ordinate and stimulate the activities of European countries in the areas of sciences, technology and applications of synthetic and natural macromolecules, and more specifically to encourage cooperation and advancement of education, research and development of polymer science and technology. It was hoped that the activities of the EPF would be recognised and that its recommendations would be paid heed to in Brussels, in the definition of the areas to be supported by the European Commission.

Development of the activities
In 1986, the French Polymer Group, chaired by J-B. Donnet, organized the first EPF meeting in Lyon. The second meeting was held in the United Kingdom with the support of Sir Geoffrey Allen, then P. Corradini in Italy, H. Spiess in Germany, R. Darms in Switzerland and N. Hadjichristidis in Greece and finally T. Spychaj and S. Penczek in 1998 in Poland organised very successful meetings, that attracted each time several hundred participants. In addition to this recurrent “EPF Symposium”, B. Rånby was in charge of selecting several workshops on specific topics, meant for young researchers to meet with seasoned scientists, and these were always successful.

Nevertheless, it was clear that no matter how much success these various workshops and symposia had received, the EPF was functioning simply as another organiser of meetings. In 1995, J-P.Vairon, as chairman of the French Polymer Group organised an informal reunion in Nancy (France). It was suggested that the EPF should modify its ways of functioning and enlarge the scope of its activity.

In 1996 in Heraklion (Greece), S. Penczek was elected the next chairman, and a number of decisions were taken and implemented immediately: creation of a Permanent Secretariat (first established in Strasbourg, E. Franta being the General Secretary and then moved to Lodz in 2000 with. S. Slomkowski). An annual high level topical meeting, so-called EUPOC, was set up in Gargnano (Italy) through F.Ciardelli, geared towards discussions of the latest developments in particularly fast developing fields. Several other initiatives were taken to establish contacts with other European scientific societies, like the European Materials Science Society and Delegation Generale X1 in EU (Brussels). By then, 23 European countries were participating in the EPF.

Furthermore, J. P.- Vairon has organised a permanent site for workshops on selected topics, free of charge, for young scientists. Several EUPOC meetings in Gargnano and workshops in Paris have been organised since then and have already achieved a status of important and timely high class meetings. G. Camino has organised several “Transalpine meetings” (mostly Italy, France, and Switzerland) and work on a united program for teaching has been started.

It has also been decided, that the current president P.J.Lemstra (1999-2001) will organise a larger scale meeting, the First European Polymer Congress in July 15-20, 2001 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands (rather than in 2000, to avoid conflicting with all major areas of the even-year large IUPAC World Polymer Congress). This congress is not only a scientific meeting but addresses important issues such as Education (Europolymer Curriculum) and interaction between academia and industry.

Secondly, mostly by initiative of the present President and through financial support from the University of Eindhoven, communication between scientists in Europe in the area of Polymer Science & Technology will be improved. The Internet Website of the EPF will soon be host to a new on-line scientific journal “e-Polymers” meant to publish quickly, free of charge for all readers, research manuscripts of high quality, after fast but effective peer review. Besides scientific papers, ‘e-polymers’ will contain information about ‘trends in polymer science and technology’, job opportunities, schemes for co-operation (including EU programmes) and Education. The aim is to make the ‘e-polymers’ journal the optimum ‘virtual marketplace’ for transfer of knowhow concerning polymers in Europe. A. Greiner (Marburg) and B. Jung started to organise this journal linked to the EPF. Finally, a commission chaired by A. Khokhlov was established on Polymer Education to define standards and to set up long distance learning through Internet.

PS:
For further information please read the flip-side of this EPF-Magazine

Stan Penczek was the former President of the EPF (1997-1999) e-mail: spenczek@bilbo.cbmm.lodz.pl

Emile Franta was Secretary General of the EPF (1996-2000)