Ohio Valley Chromatography Symposium Records

William Ross and William Tisinger began meeting in 1959 to discuss gas chromatography and others soon joined these frequent meetings. Originally named the Gas Chromatography Discussion Group, they formally organized in 1961 in Dayton, Ohio to discuss the development of gas chromatography research. The group invited outside speakers to attend monthly meetings which lasted from 1961 to 1970, continually growing their organization and providing an opportunity for researchers to share their work. These monthly discussions were held at multiple places around Dayton and Cincinnati including, Monsanto Research Corporation, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Aerospace Research Laboratories, and W.S. Merril Company, Cincinnati. The meetings involved all day workshops until monthly discussions became too frequent with the last one being a joint meeting with the Society of Applied Spectroscopy, May 22, 1970.

In 1968, the group organized their first annual workshop with fifty people in attendance and would continue the tradition for thirty years. By 1965 the group became known as the Cincinnati-Dayton Gas Chromatography Discussion Group until they decided to change their name in 1974 to the Ohio Valley Chromatography Symposium in order to include people from a wider area and expand their research to include all types of chromatography. Hueston Woods State Park Lodge, College Corner, Ohio, was the location for the three day symposiums beginning in 1970 with attendees from Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Michigan who could meet with nationally known chromatographers in an informal setting. In 1974 the group added a Thursday hands-on workshop to the symposium, held at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, but was unpopular so instead they held a short course on Wednesday in 1985. Four years later, they dropped the Wednesday class, and the symposium only consisted of the three day workshop. The group dissolved in 1998.