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The 2005 San Diego Congress
was the result of a successful bid at the IUPS General Assembly in St.
Petersburg in 1997 made by Stanley Schultz, on behalf of the US National
Academy of Sciences, to bring the IUPS Congress back to the US for the first
time since the International Congress in Washington DC almost 40 years ago.
The 1968 Washington Congress had, in fact, been my very first International
Congress and also the occasion for my first visit to the US. I had been
engaged in experimental work in physiology for a few years, but at the time
of the Congress I was still a medical student at The University of
Copenhagen. I remember well the magnificent event in Washing-ton DC and the
generosity of The American Physiological Society (APS) in awarding travel
grants to many young physiologists from Europe (including me!) at a time
when travel money was considerably more limited than is now the case, at
least in Western Europe. As always, one of the chief attractions for a young
physiologist was simply to see and hear some of the great names. At the 1968
Washington Congress I remember particularly being impressed by Adrian and
Eccles. However, I have to confess that for me the most important event at
that time was the Satellite Symposium on Exocrine Glands in Philadelphia,
just before the Congress, where I gave my first invited lecture at an
international meeting and met Sir Arnold Burgen, who later played a
significant role in my scientific career.
In 1968 I had, of course, very little feeling for the magnitude of the task
of mounting a major international Congress, but at the 2001 IUPS Congress in
Christchurch, New Zealand I was elected Secretary General of IUPS and became
co-chair (with Walter Boron as Chair) of the IUPS International Scientific
Program Committee. It was, therefore, my privilege to participate in the
process of generating the San Diego Congress program.
There are basically two tasks involved in setting up a Congress: the
practical (physical) arrangements and the organization of the scientific
program. The two are obviously connected. The IUPS 2005 National Organizing
Committee, chaired by Shu Chien, was, of course, in charge of the decisions
that had to be made with regard to the physical framework and the practical
organization of the Congress. The APS office, and particularly the Executive
Director, Martin Frank, and the Meetings Manager, Linda Allen, had to
shoulder a very major burden and did this with impressive efficiency. As
expected, San Diego did provide a memorable setting and the state-of-the-art
facilities in the excellent Conference Center made the Congress both
enjoyable and efficient. The dignified and charming manner in which Shu
Chien presided over the Congress and seemed—miraculously—to be present
everywhere also did much to foster a congenial atmosphere.
The most difficult part of any Conference Organization is to get the
scientific program right. It can, of course, never be right for everyone. To
achieve the appropriate balance between the different subject areas within
the vast family of physiological science is in itself very difficult, but
when this is combined with the need also to achieve a balance between chairs
and speakers from different countries, then the task is extraordinarily
difficult. The usual, and indeed inevitable, solution is to arrange for an
International Scientific Program Committee composed of experienced
physiologists from a wide range of countries active in physiological
research. The difficult and time consuming task of chairing this committee
fell to Walter Boron and as Vice-Chair of the Committee I can testify that
Walter took this task very seriously. Walter used his vast and broad-ranging
knowledge very wisely to guide the Committee through many difficult
decisions to arrive at what most of the physiologists I have spoken to
experienced as a very impressive program covering the full range of the best
international physiology on offer.
An important innovation for the 2005 San Diego Congress was that a major
part of the program was composed of tracks, each track being composed of,
for example, three symposia and three featured topics. A typical symposium
consisted of four 30 minute presentations by invited speakers, whereas a
featured topic was usually made up of two major presentations from invited
speakers with additional room for two speakers selected on the basis of the
submitted abstracts. While the tracks could not cover the whole of
physiology, they were wide-ranging: calcium signalling, cardiac physiology,
ecophysiology for the 21st century, education, epithelia, feeding fuel and
fat (energy metabolism), genomics, mechano-/chemotransduction,
muscle-exercise, neural control of locomotion (from genes to behaviour),
renal control of blood pressure, the regulatory brain, thermoregulation and
energetics, and tissue dynamics in the lung and vascular physiology. Outside
the tracks there were numerous free-standing symposia, as well as a number
of distinguished lectures, including the spectacular Fenn Lecture on the
Opening Day delivered by the Nobel Laureate Peter Agre and of course Allen
Cowley’s magisterial and inspiring President’s Lecture.
Between the Washington DC Congress in 1968 and the 2005 San Diego Congress,
IUPS held International Congresses of Physiological Sciences in many
exciting locations: Munich (1971), New Delhi (1974), Paris (1977), Budapest
(1980), Sydney (1983), Vancouver (1986), Helsinki (1989), Glasgow (1993),
St. Petersburg (1997) and Christchurch (2001). It has been my great
privilege to attend all these events and I think the San Diego Congress was
one of the very best. Physiology has undergone very substantial changes
since 1968 and some have spoken of the subject’s relative decline,
particularly in relation to impact factors for the physiological journals,
as compared to the more molecular branches of biology. However, physiology
at its best is in many ways in a stronger position now than ever before. The
APS journal Physiological Reviews is representative of international
physiology. It has separate US and European Editorial Boards, as well as
Associate and Corresponding Members of these editorial boards from Africa,
Asia, Australia and South America. For me it has been pleasing to note the
general increase, over the years, in the impact factor rating for
Physiological Reviews. In fact the latest figures (2004 Journal Citation
Reports) show that Physiological Reviews is now ranked, with respect to
impact factor, as number five of ALL scientific journals. This fits in well
with the high profile and outstanding quality of physiological science
presented at the IUPS Congress in San Diego.
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| The
International Scientific Program Committee, at its November 2003 Meeting
in Landsdowne, near Washington DC. Front row from left: William Chin,
Akimichi Kaneko, Shu Chien, JoRae Wright, Ole Petersen, Walter Boron.
Second row: Yoshihisa Kurachi, Barbara Block, Ann Sefton, Malcolm
Gordon. Third row: Curt Sigmund, Allen Cowley, Roger Nicoll, Bengt
Saltin, Harold Atwood, Irene Schulz and Peter Hunter (photo taken by
Martin Frank). |
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| APS President D. Neil
Granger welcomes Congress participants. |
Fenn Lecturer Peter Agre
addresses the Congress. |
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