In the final issue of the fiftieth volume, this journal celebrated its past by reissuing those articles that had become Citation Classics. It also contained the papers stemming from the Symposium funded by Elsevier Science and the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT 'Frontiers of Chemical Engineering Science'. The Editors are aware that our discipline is in a process of rapid change. This is manifest in various ways in different parts of the globe, but a number of themes are evident. The discipline can be said to be redefining itself.
In response to this climate, the Editors have decided to introduce a column entitled "Comment" that will serve as a forum for expressing views — controversial views, we hope, on occasions. For the time being, at least, the Editors themselves will provide the copy for this column but consequential responses from readers can be considered as a 'Letter to the Editors'. 'Comment' will not be concerned with assessment of an individual learned paper but with issues such as our relationship to science, mathematics and other engineering disciplines, new methods of instrumentation, the research possibilities opened up by information technology, in fact all the very issues to be found in Chemical Engineerin 9 Science 50(24). Nor would we exclude discussion on the teaching of chemical engineering fundamentals and its relationship to research. Indeed, are these fundamentals the same, or do we have to re-examine these with a growing interest in the design of products, as distinct from processes, and in the relationship between processing and properties?
We are planning four columns per annum and I hope we shall print the next in three months time with John Villadsen taking the stand. I hope you will find this new feature interesting and entertaining. It is exciting that chemical engineering is dynamic and not static. Or maybe you do not even agree with that!