2010 Spring NATIONAL ACS MEETING
San Francisco, CA (March 21-25, 2010)

Baekeland Symposium, sponsored by HIST, cosponsoted by POLY, PMSE

Dear Poly Members,

A symposium entitled "100 + Years of Plastics. Leo Baekeland and Beyond"
is scheduled for the Spring ACS meeting in San Francisco. This symposium
is being arranged by HIST and is co-sponsored by POLY and PMSE. It
celebrates the 103rd anniversary of the synthesis of Bakelite and the
100th anniversary of the founding of National Bakelite Corp. While there
will be several papers on Bakelite, we hope that other important
plastics, i.e. Nylon, polyethylene, polypropylene, etc. will also be the
subject of presentations. The organizer would especially like to see a
paper on glyptals.

Among the confirmed speakers are Carl Kaufmann, the author of the only
book length biography of Leo Baekeland, Hugh Karraker, great grandson of
Leo Baekeland, Jim Economy, Seth Rasmussen, and James Traynham. We hope
that POLY and PMSE members will support this important historical
symposium by their attendance and by some additional members presenting
papers.

The symposium will be scheduled for either Monday, Mar. 22, or Tuesday,
Mar. 23. The FIRM date for submission of abstracts is Oct. 26. The
organizer is Dr. E. Thomas Strom, Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry, University of Texas at Arlington. About six more papers
are needed to fill out the symposium. Proposals for addtional papers
should be discussed with the symposium organizer, who can be contacted by
phone at 214-376-9602 or by e-mail at (tomstrom@juno.com).

E. Thomas (Tom) Strom