The Pittsburgh Conference, as most of us know, started as a small joint effort of two local scientific groups in western Pennsylvania, the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh and the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh, to bring their members together annually to see the latest offerings in analytical chemistry instrumentation. Fifty-three years later, the conference has grown into the dominant worldwide venue for the exhibition of laboratory products, with nearly 25,000 people attending last year in New Orleans. The growth of Pittcon is, in large part, a validation of the role that analytical chemistry plays in society today. From measuring the levels of possible toxins in drinking water to the levels of proteins in a cell, it is analytical chemists and their instruments that provide these data (see Pittcon 2002 Online Pocket Guide).

Last December, the Pittsburgh Conference and the Chemical Heritage Foundation announced that the two organizations were establishing the PITTCON Heritage Award to recognize, in their words, “outstanding individuals whose entrepreneurial careers shaped the instrumentation community, inspired achievement, promoted public understanding of the modern instrumentation sciences, and highlighted the role of analytical chemistry in world economies.” The first award in what will be an annual series goes to Dave Nelson, an old friend and boss of this author two decades back.

Dave’s contributions to this industry are myriad. Starting off at Beckman Instruments, he moved to Cary Instruments and became president of that organization in 1968. Following a brief stop at Varian Instruments, he joined Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 1973, becoming the analytical division’s group marketing manager. Those were the days when analytical instruments were changing from analog to digital, which is another way of saying that computers were becoming a key part of the analytical process for tasks such as data acquisition and library searching. However, in those days, rather than personal computers, it was minicomputers from DEC, Gould, Interdata, and others that were used for these duties. Dave’s vision was to build a chromatography data acquisition system (CDS) around a device that could be attended to not by a computer guru, but rather by the chemist actually working in the lab. At that time, HP management did not share his vision. Instrument companies were making money selling $100,000 minicomputers that could acquire data from dozens of chromatographs simultaneously or a $5000 dedicated chromatography integrator that worked only with one. The thought that a $2000 PC, which many viewed as only an adolescent’s game machine, could take over that market seemed at best illogical. In 1980, Dave left HP to start Nelson Analytical. By the 1980s, his Model 2600 CDS units had become a fixture in many labs. Nelson Analytical was acquired by Perkin-Elmer in 1989.

For those of you going to New Orleans next month, we invite you to take a walk through the Pittcon Hall of Fame. There you can see displays describing many of the founders and promoters of this industry, ranging from the Varian brothers (Sigurd and Russell) to Jim Waters, Chester Fisher, and the venerable centenarian Arnold Beckman. Most of these stars of the instrumentation industry were profiled in our 1999 supplement Made to Measure. A display commemorating Dave Nelson’s contributions to this industry will be added to this Hall of Fame. We at Today’s Chemist at Work congratulate Dave on his selection to this distinguished group.