The time is ripe, perhaps, to review the development which has taken place since the Essential Oil Symposium started in 1969—and try to see a little ahead. After all, the future will be built on the present, and the present has emerged from the past. Winston Churchill expressed it as follows: “The longer you can look back, the further you can see ahead. ” This holds true also for us.
In the beginning On September 30, 1969, four enthusiastic pharmacognosists, F. W. Hefendehl from the University of Freiburg, FRG; K.-H. Kubeczka from tbe Technical University of Karlsruhe, FRG; J. Karlsen and A. Baerheim Svendsen, both from the State University of Leiden, The Netherlands, came together in Leiden and agreed to organize informal annual meetings to discuss common, mostly practical analytical problems encountered in essential oil research.
Rather than create a new organization or society, the four scientists found it convenient to arrange meetings in connection with the congresses of the Gesellschaft für Arzneipflanzenforschnung. During the first meeting in Leiden it was decided that only scientists who were personally experimentally involved in research should be invited to participate in the meetings, since only they could contribute substantially to the discussions.