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True version of the world map.

News Brief from Down Under

This issue of News Brief is devoted to items gleaned by your Editor while attend- ing the Natural Gas Conversion Sympo- sium at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia. Whether News Brief from Down Under was the correct title to use while soliciting items for inclusion (comments on papers presented, descriptions of work in labora- tories in Australia and New Zealand, indus- trial news, etc.) was questioned by several, including the person who kindly provided the map of the world shown above. Notwithstanding, your Editor felt as if he was upside-down for several days after arrival and feels that the same applied to several of his colleagues recently imported from the Northern Hemisphere. (For those who feel disoriented by the map, Sydney is at the top left-hand corner.)

Our Australian hosts did everything in their power to make us all feel at home and are to be congratulated for having or- ganiaed an excellent Symposium. I myself had the feeling that those Involved in natu-

applied catrlysis A: general

ral gas conversion have perhaps lost their way slightly and that they were looking to the gurus of industry to put them on the right track once more. Excellent plenary lectures by Jack Lunsford (Recent Advan- ces in the Oxidative Coupling of Methane), Jens Rostrup-Nielsen (Aspects of CO:! Rs forming Chemistry), H.M.V. van Wechem (Conversion of Natural Gas to Middle Dis- tillates via the SMDA Process (on the Shell

process in Malaysia)), K. Fujimoto (New Uses of Methane) and R. Crabtree (Current Ideas and Future Prospects in Metal Cata- lyzed Methane Conversion) went some way to restore our confidence, but even then one felt that the solutions put forward were not always generally applicable, a view that was reinforced in a panel discus- sion on the last day (on “The Future of Natural Gas Conversion”); the aims of methane coupling seem to depend on to whom you talk to, industrial concerns sometimes give the impression that all the problems are solved when that is not the case, etc. One also felt that many of the papers presented orally or in the poster

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sessions were reporting work which bore marked similarities, with minor variants, to

work published elsewhere. Having said that, there were also many papers presen- ting good sound newwork and many lively and useful discussions, both in public and in private.

Not content with five days of hard slog (perhaps not all upside-down) with parallel sessions, posters, social events (lubri- cated by abundant and excellent Austra- lian wine), some of us left the delights of Bondi Beach (still frequented by early- morning surfers even in mid-winter) and moved to the relative isolation of the In- stitute of Administration of the University of New South Wales’ Executive Retreat at

Liile Bay, 18 km East of Sydney, to take part in a two day Cl Reactions Symposium organised by Jim Goodwin and his col- leagues. This meeting was pan of the series which is held yearly in different parts of the world, generally associated with other meetings on related topics, and it followed the same format of presentations on specific topics and detailed discussion thereafter. Many participants of the two gatherings then dispersed to various parts of Australia on their way home, many meet- ing up in places such as Cairns and wish- ing that the CI Symposium could have been held in such a venue rather than so close to Sydney.

The next Natural Gas Conversion Sym- posium will be held in South Africa in 1998. (We have been promised that if the CI meeting also takes place there, a very dif- ferent venue to that of the Symposium, perhaps one of the National Parks, will be selected for it).

Though the following contributions deal largely with natural gas, please do not for- get that contributions on other aspects of

applied catalysis A: general

catalysis from Down Under will be wel- come for future issues!

JULIAN ROSS

Netural Gas Conversion Award

A surprise item at the opening cere- mony of the Natural Gas Meeting at Bondi Beth was the presentation of this newly created award, given by the Royal Austra- lian Chemical Institute (RACI) Division of Industrial Chemistry, to Professor Jack Lunsford in honour of his major contribu- tions to the subject of natural gas conver- sion. The accompanying photograph shows Jack receiving the award from Pro- fessor David Trimm, Chairman of the meet- ing. (The RACI have provided sufficient funds to enable the award to be made again at future meetings in the series.)

Jack Lunsford received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering in 1957 from Texas A & M University, where he was appointed Commander of the Corps of Cadets in his senior year, and his Ph.D. degree, also in Chemical Engineering, from Rice University in 1982. Following a year as Assistant Professor at the Univer- sky of Idaho, three years of service as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, and a year as Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State College, he returned in 1988 to his alma mater as faculty member, joining the De- partment of Chemistry at Texas A & M in 1988. He rose quickly through the aca- demic ranks, and was promoted to Full Professor in 1971. While at Texas A & M, he has served as the principal research advisor for more than 50 graduate workers who earned Ph.D. or MS. degrees under his guidance, and for more than 88 post- doctoral students who have studied in his

Volume 105 No. 1 - 2 November 1993