2100 Microbiologists At Montreal Congress

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29932, 20 September 1962, Page 16

2100 Microbiologists At Montreal Congress

The Bth International Congress for Microbiology brought to Montreal for a week in August 2100 scientists from 52 countries. Among them were 650 Americans, five Russians, and three New Zealanders. One of the last, Dr. I. D. Blair, reader in microbiology at Lincoln College, was as impressed with the arrangements as with the brilliant speakers assembled. Preparations had been in progress for 18 months, he says in a letter from Canada, but members of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists had been contributing two dollars each a year for the last five years to start the congress fund. The cost of the congress—£Bo,ooo—was fully recovered by supporting grants from departments of the Canadian Government, Canadian universities, and 90 commercial organisations.

The congress was held in the Queen Elizabeth Hotel which, Dr. Blair says, is beyond adequate description by New Zealand standards. It is owned by the Canadian National Railway and managed by the Hilton organisation. Dr. Blair says he does not know how many rooms it contains but he visited room 1303 on floor 13 which was a three-roomed suite. Some delegates lived in this hotel but “the poor relations from the sterling areas” were accommodated in residential colleges of McGill University and were happy indeed to obtain meals there for one dollar compared with seven dollars for "snacks” at the Queen Elizabeth. A mezzanine floor of the hotel had a congress office, post office, grand salon (about half the size of King Edward barracks), four other large rooms named after Canadian explorers and 11 smaller rooms named after Quebec rivers and each capable of seating 150. There was also a women’s lounge, a big press, radio, and television centre, an exhibition hall and a vestibule where hundreds could stroll and chat. All these areas were in full-time use for the congress.

Dr. Blair says the grand salon was comfortably able to accommodate the whole assembly of 2100 scientists for the opening and, later, a gigantic cocktail party for 2500 without any evidence of over-crowding. The scientific programme consisted of 13 symposia, four panel discussions, and 35 “focal topic” discussions so planned that concurrent sessions caused little conflict of interest. Among the participants were world leaders in every phase of science including Dr. J. Salk of polio vaccine fame, young men now dominating the pages of

scientific literature, and the authors of nearly every new book in the field. Everything microbiological was featured —virus genetics, “microbiological engineering” (fermentation), microbiology of soil, rumen, insects, food, silage, staphylococci, and streptococci, enzymes, neoplasia, virulence, and epidemiology. The magnitude of this congress was such Dr. Blair says that only two offers were received to stage the next—from Russia and from Israel.