Mission

The International Free Radicals Symposium Committee is a non-profit organization authorizing and promoting the holding of scientific and educational meetings on a biannual basis on the subject of free radicals, which are important intermediates in complex chemical reactions

Free radicals play a vital role as intermediates in many chemical reactions including those involved in combustion and chemical synthesis, as well as ones in the atmosphere and in interstellar space. The International Free Radicals Symposium was established nearly fifty years ago to bring together workers at the frontier of research in a wide variety of areas of free radical chemistry with particular emphasis on the spectroscopic identification, characterization and dynamics of radicals. The composition of the International Committee guarantees the high scientific level of these meetings.

While the theme of present meetings remain the same as for the first Free Radicals Symposium, the experimental and theoretical approaches, as well as the applications, have advanced tremendously. Whereas at that time, the presence or importance of free radicals in a particular process was typically only inferred or hypothesized, today using modern spectroscopic means of detection their presence cannot only be proven but the radicals themselves characterized in great detail. Indeed what once was seen as “through a glass darkly,” has now been illuminated brightly by lasers and other means of detection.

The study of radicals, and their radiative and dynamical properties has shed light on a vast variety of physical and chemical processes. These processes span an environment from inside every living being, through the fires of combustion, to our atmosphere, and beyond to the observable limits of interstellar space. Indeed some free radicals have been observed for the first time in interstellar space before they could be produced in the laboratory. Therefore the Free Radicals Symposia are strongly interdisciplinary with chemists, physicists, astrophysicists and environmental scientists participating, resulting in a conference unique in its creative interaction between diverse disciplines in both their theoretical and experimental aspects.