This page contains Secretary's Reports to the BCA Council for the following
years:
1998/9
SECRETARY'S ANNUAL REPORT TO COUNCIL 1998/9
The present membership of Council is as follows:
The Council has met three times during the year: during the Spring Meeting in St Andrews, at Birkbeck College, London in October 1998 and at the Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford in March 1999. At the St Andrews meeting the President and the Treasurer were re-elected to serve for a further two years. Professor Guy Orpen was elected as an Ordinary Member of Council and Professors Chris Gilmore and Judith Howard were co-opted until after IUCr99 at Glasgow.
In 1998 four excellent quarterly issues of Crystallography News were published. The coloured covers are very attractive and the Newsletter made a small profit. The Newsletter has published full accounts of all the events mentioned in this report and the Council thanks the Editor for her efforts in compiling the Newsletter, as well as for the substantial advertisement revenue generated. Kate Crennell also maintains the BCA pages on the Internet.
The Annual Spring Meeting at St Andrews was a great success and made a
record profit for the BCA. The extra profit has been used as bursaries to
pay the registration fees of postgraduate and postdoctoral BCA members at
Glasgow. The activities of the various Groups have been reported on, in
detail, in the June Issue of Crystallography News.
The scientific
content was of a high standard and the conference facilities were first
class. A new venture was the introduction of a BCA Plenary Session and a
Question and Answer Session. The Plenary Session was very successful - the
theme was 'Disorder' and each group nominated one speaker. The Council would
wish to thank the local organisers, and all their helpers, seen and unseen
for all their hard work. Special thanks go to Dr Phil Lightfoot.
During the year there were several meetings and workshops. All four groups have held meetings, including ones on 'Protein:Nucleic Acid Interaction (Royal Marsden Hospital, London), 'Neutrons for Structural Chemistry'(RAL), 'Crystallography in Industry' (Zeneca, Runcorn) and 'Structural Physics of Functional Materials' (Warwick). The Industrial Crystallography Group has organised a number of special interest meetings and workshops.
A successful Summer School in Protein Crystallography was held in Bath. It is hoped that these schools will be run every year with venues alternating between Scotland and the South of England.
Membership is healthy and many young crystallographers have received BCA bursaries to attend meetings and conferences, both in the UK and world-wide. Frank Allen (with Chick Wilson as alternate) represents the BCA on the European Crystallographic Association (ECA). Frank is a member of the ECA Council, which will be responsible for European Crystallographic Meetings.
Some good friends and colleagues have died during the year, including Sir Charles Frank, James Gordon, Don Rogers and Lord Phillips of Ellesmere (David Phillips) - the first president of the BCA. Appreciations appear in Crystallography News.
We are looking forward to the IUCr Congress in Glasgow.
We wish Professor Chris Gilmore and his team every success in arranging the Glasgow meeting. The next BCA meeting will be at Heriot-Watt 3-6 April 2000.
Hilary Muirhead
(Hon Secretary)
April 1999.
Page last updated 30 May 1999
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