ICUMSA News 47

Webmaster:

Luca Bani

January 2003

Editor: Mr. C. J. Shelton
Clive Shelton Associates
Provident House – Burrel Row
Beckenham – Kent BR3 1AT - UK
Tel.: +44 (0)20 8249 6524
Fax: +44 (0)20 8249 6554
E-mail: cliveshelton@toysafe.co.uk

Message from the President

It is a difficult job to manage a Session through the internet and we have tried to do our best. Thanks must go to those who have participated actively and all National Committees, Referees etc.

The ICUMSA website now includes the text of all Reports for all Subjects, the discussion contributions received by e-mail from participants at the Pune meeting, as well as contributions from National Committees and the others not present in Pune.

We are now collecting Referees’ responses to the discussions and their proposals for final Recommendations. This job has been rather more complicated than expected and it has not been possible to meet our expected deadline. When this work is finished, we will put the material on the website and we will ask the National Committees for their agreement.

We have prepared an agreement with Bartens for the printing and distribution of ICUMSA publications. This agreement received the consensus of National Committees and has now been signed and exchanged. Bartens is now working towards the preparation of the Proceedings which will be completed when we have received the agreement of National Committees on the final Recommendations. The Methods Book supplement is also being prepared by Bartens and will be available in due course.

Due to the resignation of certain key people in ICUMSA we have been working to find suitable alternatives. We have prepared a new table of the ICUMSA organisation and this is now in the hands of the National Committees for their ratification.

We are trying to find some people to replace Referees who have recently resigned. We hope to present the new list in the next ICUMSA News.

In response to some excellent suggestions from Mary An Godshall, we are trying to improve the ICUMSA website.

Following the suggestions made during the discussion in Pune and received from some National Committees, we are planning a short meeting of the Commission in 2004 before the next General Meeting in 2006 in Australia (the Australian National Committee have confirmed their willingness to organize the meeting and we thank them very warmly). In order to limit expenses of participants and the Commission for the “intermediate” meeting in 2004, we have looked into the possibility of sharing the meeting with another international meeting usually attended by a large number of people, part of them involved in ICUMSA. We thought that the SPRI meeting to be held in Atlanta in 2004 was the best occasion and have asked Mary An Godshall (Managing Director of SPRI) if it was possible to have two days for an ICUMSA meeting at the end of the SPRI meeting in 2004. The SPRI Board have generously agreed to our proposal and have decided to act as a sponsor for the meeting. Of course we are delighted with this and we thank Mary An, SPRI and the US National Committee for their cooperation. This proposal is now in the hands of the National Committees for their approval.

I would like to close this message remembering the centenary of an eminent sugar specialist, Prof. Karel Šandera, who appears in our book “The History of ICUMSA”. Dr. Karel Duffek, Chairman of Czech National Committee, sent me the following message and photo.

Prof.Ing.RNDr. Karel Šandera, DrSc.

Karel Šandera was born on 25th January 1903 in Mohelno in Moravia. After graduation from the secondary school in Prague - Vinohrady in 1920, he studied at the Institute of Chemical and Technological Engineering and at the same time at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Charles University in Prague. He passed his second state exam at the Institute in 1924 and took almost immediately a degree of Doctor of Natural Sciences at the University.

Following his graduation, Šandera became a scientific worker at the Research Institute of the Sugar Industry, he was director of this Institute from 1945 to 1958. Šandera was involved in the field of applied physical chemistry at the Institute of Chemical Technological Engineering in 1947. In 1952 he was nominated professor of Carbohydrate Technology and an external head of the Department. From 1958, Šandera was fully engaged at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague and became head of the Department of Physical Chemistry for the period up to his death. In 1953/54 he was Dean of the Faculty of Food Technology, the creation of which benefited from his contribution , and he was a vice-chancellor of the Institute from 1955 to 1957.

The scientific work of Prof. Šandera was based on physical chemistry. He contributed to the transformation of empirical sugar manufacturing practices into a scientifically based technology applying physical chemistry and sugar instrumental analysis. He was especially engaged in applications of conductivity. In his later years he also worked on sugar beet agronomy.

He published 24 books and over 400 original papers in scientific journals.

Prof. Šandera died on 8th July 1959.