A modest celebration in honor of the 60th uninterrupted annual International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy is planned. A focus of this celebration will be a special plenary session titled "Perspectives on Spectroscopy and Science." It will feature talks by Robert Curl, Rice University, and Harry Kroto, Sussex University, 1996 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry. Jon Hougen, NIST, will oversee a light-hearted retrospective on the Symposium as part of the festivities before the picnic. With the guidance of the International Advisory Committee, both the plenary speakers above and the mini-symposia topics below have been selected on the basis of a theme this year. For the three mini-symposia, it was decided to highlight applications of spectroscopy. The plenary speakers were chosen to discuss topics that have either been of fundamental spectroscopic interest for the 20th Century and expected to continue well into the 21st, or topics that may establish themselves as such in the 21st Century.

Special Sessions

Eric Herbst, The Ohio State University, and Lew Snyder, University of Illinois, are organizing a mini-symposium on astrophysical applications titled, "Large Astronomical Molecules." Invited speakers include Dominique Bockelee-Morvan, Observatoire de Paris a Meudon; Mike Hollis, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Christine Joblin, CNRS; and Peter Sarre, University of Nottingham. A second mini-symposium is being organized by Fleming Crim, University of Wisconsin, on the subject of "Spectroscopy in Service of Dynamics." Invited talks for this mini-symposium will be given by Fleming Crim, University of Wisconsin; Marsha Lester, University of Pennsylvania; and David Nesbitt, JILA. A third mini-symposium is being organized by Tim Zwier, Purdue University, on applications of spectroscopy to "Bio-relevant Molecules." Invited speakers include Michel Mons, CNRS; David Plusquellic, NIST; and Martin Zanni, University of Wisconsin at Madison. A session on theory is being organized by Russell Pitzer and Anne McCoy, Ohio State University, featuring an invited talk by Joel Bowman, Emory University.