30 years of GEFTA

The Annual Meeting of the Gesellschaft fuer Thermische Analyse e.V. (GEFTA) will take place in Braunschweig from October 4 to 6, 2004, celebrating the 30th anniversary of this association.

Once again, after having met there in 1992, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt will host approximately 80 participants, which have been preregistrated at the moment. About two thirds of the participants come from universities, research institutes and public institutions and one-third from industry.

27 lectures and 15 posters will be presented. The contributions reflect both the topicality of the problems investigated and the great variety of areas in which the thermal and calorimetric analysis methods are applied. The contributions regarding inorganic solids and ceramics, the characterization of polymers, liquid crystals, biofuels, chip calorimeters as well as waste recycling, clean technologies and energy storage materials are an interesting cross section of the research work conducted in Germany in the field of thermal analysis and calorimetry and demonstrate its high standard and close relations with the applications.

For 30 years, the focus of GEFTA's work has been on: furthering the national and international scientific exchange, raising the quality and increasing the breadth of research, further training of specialists and support to beginners, as well as a heightening of metrological knowledge. During these 30 years, seven presidents have headed the association: Hans Lehmann (1974-77), Hans J. Seifert (1977-80), Detlef Krug (1980-83), Wolf-Dieter Emmerich (1983-89), Wolfgang Hemminger (1989-95), Werner Ludwig (1995-98), Michael Feist (since 1998). For more than 24 years, Volker Kraemer has been deputy president and manager of the GEFTA.

The current GEFTA membership now stands at 220; of these 40 are private persons, 20 are students and 38 are employees of companies, the latter group including representatives from all of the major instrument manufacturers that operate in Germany.

The following five fields of work, undertaken on a regular basis, characterize the present activities of GEFTA:

• Annually, the GEFTA Annual Meetings with main and short lectures, posters and a general meeting.
• Biennially, the Ulm-Freiberger Kalorimetrietage continuing the Ulmer Kalorimetrietage created by G.W.H. Höhne and W. Hemminger.
• Biennially, the Laehnwitz-Seminare ueber Kalorimetrie created by Ch. Schick.
• Annually, advanced training courses, i.e. alternately beginners' courses and special seminars.
• Working groups on metrological methodology and user-specific questions with interlaboratory tests, comparison tests and laying-down of calibration regulations: calibration of DSC (1984-1999), kinetics (1990-1999), calorimetry, polymers, thermophysics, and temperature calibration of thermal balances.

Furthermore, GEFTA publishes a bulletin every two years and maintained, before the Internet age, a regular reference service with tables of contents of the two most important periodicals, Thermochim.Acta and J.Therm.Anal.Calorim.

An important element of the work of GEFTA is the close contact with the companies manufacturing thermoanalytical systems. These financially support the meetings of the GEFTA on a regular basis and are also partners for the recruiting of members, for the distribution of our calibration regulations of which that for DSC became an official ICTAC Recommendation several years ago. These calibration regulations are the result of the work of our DSC Calibration working group, which has been undertaken for more than a decade by H.K. Cammenga, W. Eysel, E. Gmelin, W. Hemminger, G. W. H. Höhne and St. Sarge.

Since its foundation, GEFTA has paid particular attention to European cooperation and thus has organized many bilateral meetings with the scientific associations of neighbouring countries. Six times these meetings were held jointly with the Swiss association STK (Constance 1976; Rapperswil 1979, Freiburg 1986, Munich 1993, Freiburg 1996, Munich 2001), twice with the Scandinavian countries (Kiel 1978, Copenhagen 1983), once with The Netherlands (Aachen 1981), with Hungary (Sopron 1995), with France (Freiburg 1996), and with Poland (Dresden 2000). For the year 2005, again a Dutch-German GEFTA Meeting is planned in The Netherlands and will be organized by the TAWN.

The good contacts that GEFTA had already with the former Working Group for Thermal Analysis of the Chemical Association of the GDR, a long time before the unification of the two German states, decisively contributed to the admission of this Working Group to GEFTA in 1990. This has been of great benefit to all those concerned.

For many years, the GEFTA has awarded the NETZSCH-GEFTA Prize for excellent scientific achievements in the area of thermal analysis and calorimetry. Previous recipients of this award have been: H. Lehmann 1978, E. Koch 1979, H.R. Oswald 1980, W. Hemminger 1981, R.C. Mackenzie 1982, G. Hentze 1983, A. Kettrup 1984, E. Gmelin 1985, K. Heide 1986, H.J. Seifert 1987, V. Balek 1988, K.-R. Löblich 1989, H.-J. Flammersheim 1991, W.-D. Emmerich 1992, M. Richardson 1994, P.K. Gallagher 1996, G. Leitner 1998, W. Eysel 1999, M. Maciejewski 2001, and J. Fischer 2003. This year, the NETZSCH-GEFTA Prize will be awarded to Stefan Sarge.

In addition, since 1990, the NETZSCH-GEFTA Supportive Prize for young scientists has been awarded every two years.

On the occasion of our 30th anniversary, TA Instruments will again award an Industrial Research Prize, this having been done for the first time in 1999.

In 1997, for the first time, the GEFTA Science Prize for extraordinary scientific achievements was awarded to Ingolf Lamprecht. Günther W. H. Höhne had been honoured with the second GEFTA Science Prize in 2003.

We do our best to continue the successful work of the past 30 years and also wish that in the future we will all have vivid resonance to the events and results of GEFTA.

Michael Feist