EDITORIAL The Italian Chemical Society Is 100 Years Old The initial organization of the Italian chemical community started around the year 1870, at the end of the Risorgimento (the period of political unification of Italy), and is closely connected with the history of the Country. In fact, Italian chemists were particularly responsive to the birth of the new nation, and numerous leading scientists became directly involved in important political duties. However, the foun- dation of a unified Italian chemical society took about forty years, from 1870 to 1909. The reasons for such a late estab- lishment are rooted in the social and economic fragmen- tation of the Country, which in turn was the result of a centuries-old political division of Italy in many States. The year 1870 marked the Italian unification and the first attempt to establish a national chemical society. In the autumn of 1870, Stanislao Cannizzaro (Professor at Palermo) called a meeting of Italian chemists in Florence, at that time the capital of Italy, with the aim of founding an Italian chemical society similar to the chemical societies of other European countries. Unfortunately only seven chemists showed up, but the meeting was not a complete fiasco because it ended with the proposal to publish a national chemical journal as a means to aggregate Italian chemists. In the spring of 1871, the first issue of Gazzetta Chimica Italiana was published in Palermo, and the journal quickly gained a national and international reputation. Stanislao Cannizzaro (Palermo 1826 - Rome 1910). In the following decades the economic and social situation of Italy strongly improved, and three chemical societies were established in Milan (1895), in Turin (1899), and in Rome (1902). In 1895, the Societa ` Chimica di Milano was founded by chemists from academia, industry, and analyti- Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2009, 3095-3097 www.eurjoc.org  2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim 3095 cal laboratories, almost all living in northern Italy. In 1899 the Associazione Chimica Industriale was founded in Turin with the aim of offering members, almost all resident in Piedmont, the Italian region with the most important chemical industries, the chance of exchanging ideas and in- formation concerning new processes or materials. In 1902, the Societa ` Chimica di Roma was founded with the aim of gathering chemists from central and southern Italy. Almost all the chemistry professors became members of the Rome Society, because the Society was established by Emanuele Paterno ` and his mentor Cannizzaro, men of great academic and political power (both at that time Professors in Rome and Senators of the Italian Kingdom), whose presence underlined the national relevance of the initiative. In 1906 the Sixth International Congress of Applied Chemistry was held in Rome, and the triumphal success of the event spurred the unification of Italian chemists in a national so- ciety. Eventually, the Milan and Rome societies decided to merge, and on January 1st 1909 the Societa ` Chimica Itali- ana was established as a federation of the two associ- ations. [1] The frontispiece of the first issue of Gazzetta Chimica Italiana (1871). In 1998 the journal merged with other European journals to form the core of EurJIC and EurJOC. Since then one hundred years have passed, and the Society (http://www.soc.chim.it/) is currently strong with approxi- mately 5000 active members and has 17 regional sections, 11 thematic divisions, and 17 interdisciplinary groups. The Society is governed by an Executive Committee (composed of the President, the Past-President, and two Vice-Presi- dents) and a Central Council (including also the Presidents of the regional sections and of the thematic divisions). The Central Council is assisted by a number of consulting com-