Welcome to the 36th ACS Western Regional Meeting. Your host for this meeting is the California Section of the American Chemical Society. We hope that you can participate and enjoy the wide variety of scheduled events, technical programs, symposia, luncheons, dinners, and receptions. We literally eat our way through these meetings. By design, this is an effort to encourage communication and interaction among our fellow chemists.

San Francisco is the ultimate meeting destination for scholars and travelers worldwide. It is at the center for the creation and the crossroads of the dissemination of the intellectual, financial, entrepreneurial, and recreational events and ideas that are sweeping the world. From a green chemistry session to patent-free chemistry discussions in the hallways, from ultra-pure to single atom chemistry, from the chemistry and origins of natural life to the creation of new life forms, from discovering existing elements to creating new ones, from the faintest light to the most intense light sources on the planet, the San Francisco Bay Area has the ideas, the resources, the attitudes, the laboratories, and the scientists to challenge anyone and everyone to their core foundations and beliefs. We welcome you to meet and interact with your fellow chemists who are doing all of the above and more on a daily basis. It is through these interactions and discussions that we will proceed into the 21^st century in our own unique way.

This is a meeting designed to present and facilitate discussion about the chemistry associated with new ideas. We are all together in one hotel to talk, listen, present, and discuss new research, new ideas, and how to communicate them to everyone else on the planet. We close with Education Day on Saturday, October 28^th, 2000. Welcome to the 21^st century.

Neal D. Byington, Chair

36^th ACS Western Regional Meeting

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