IUCr 1996 Report - Seventeenth International Congress and General Assembly

The General Assembly and Congress were attended by 2311 scientists, 252 accompanying members and 150 exhibitors from 51 countries. The Fourth Ewald Medal and Prize were presented to Professor M. G. Rossmann at the Opening Ceremony. There were 24 Keynote Lectures and 104 Microsymposia and open Commission meetings. Nobel Laureate talks were presented at lunch times and the early afternoons were reserved for poster sessions. There were two evening sessions and three Workshops. The abstracts in the published book of Collected Abstracts were prepared from hard-copy and electronic submissions and these abstracts also appeared as a Supplement to Acta Crystallographica, Volume 52, dated 1 September 1996. A commercial exhibition comprising 33 companies, booksellers and software demonstrations was organized.

The General Assembly met on the evenings of Saturday 10 August, Sunday 11 August and Wednesday 14 August. The proposed changes to Statutes 3.2 and 3.3 to allow the admission of the Academy of Sciences Located in Taipei were approved. Applications for membership of the IUCr from the Academy of Sciences Located in Taipei (Category II) and from the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies (Category I) were accepted. The Minutes of the Sixteenth General Assembly in 1993 were approved. Proposed changes to Statutes 5.4 and 5.5 to allow postal ballots of the General Assembly were approved. Proposed changes to the By-Laws to incorporate the existence of the Finance Committee, to establish officially the position of Convener and to incorporate the existence of the Sub-committee on the Union Calendar were approved. It received the triennial financial report and the reports of the Executive Committee, the Commissions, the Scientific Associates and Regional Associates and the Union Representatives on Other Bodies since the Sixteenth General Assembly in 1993. New Officers of the Union, Chairmen and members of Commissions and Union Representatives were elected; the full list of these people will be given as an Annex to the report of the Seventeenth General Assembly and Congress. A Commission on XAFS and a Commission on Small-Angle Scattering were established. The Commission on Crystallographic Data was terminated and replaced by a Committee on Crystallographic Databases. The Commission on Crystallographic Apparatus was renamed Commission on High Pressure and the Commission on Small Molecules was renamed Commission on Structural Chemistry. The report of the Chairman of the Sub-committee on Electronic Publishing, Dissemination and Storage of Information was accepted. The good progress of the IUCr/Oxford University Press Book Series was noted. The General Assembly approved the recommendation that the unit contribution should remain unchanged at CHF 1000 for the years 1997-1999 inclusive. It reaffirmed its decision to hold the Eighteenth General Assembly and Congress in Glasgow, UK. It also provisionally accepted an invitation from the Israel Crystallographic Society to hold the Nineteenth General Assembly and Congress in Jerusalem, Israel, in 2002.

The Executive Committee met for several days before, and most days during, the Congress, mainly to deal with matters directly related to the business of the General Assembly and the work of the Commissions.

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