Analyst, December 1996, Vol. I21 1749 Guest Editors Professor David Parker, Professor Arthur K. Covington, Professor Brian J. Birch and Dr. Arnold G. Fogg Professor David Parker, MA, DPhil, C.Chem, FRSC David Parker was born in County Durham in 1956 and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford gaining a first-class degree in chemistry in 1978. He undertook research in the Dyson Perrins Laboratory working with Dr. John Brown, examining the mechanism of asymmetric homogeneous catalysis. He left Oxford in 1980 and enjoyed a NATO fellowship in Strasbourg, working with Professor Jean-Marie Lehn on various aspects of macrocyclic chemistry. The appointment to a lectureship at Durham University in 1982 brought him back to his native North-East. In 1989 he was promoted to a senior lectureship and in 1992 he took up a Chair in Chemistry.Professor Parker has published over 160 papers and a dozen patents on a variety of themes involving solution complexation phenomena. These include chirality and catalysis, electroactive materials and sensors, the targeting of metal complexes in vivo and a good deal of synthetic work and solution complexation chemistry related to the development and application of macrocyclic chemistry which most recently has focused on lanthanide coordination chemistry. In 1988 he was awarded the Hickinbottom Fellowship by The Royal Society of Chemistry and the following year he gained a Corday-Morgan medal and prize. He received the TCT Research Prize in Organic Chemistry in 1991 and in 1996 he won the Interdisciplinary Award of the RSC for his work on tailored and targeted metal complexes.He has served on Perkin Council and on various other RSC committees and is currently Chairman of the UK Macrocyclic Group and Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Durham. He maintains strong contacts with various industrial organi- sations particularly Celltech Therapeutics and Guerbet s.a. but has also worked closely with Zeneca, ICI, Glaxo and the Cookson group. Professor Parker is married and has three energetic children and maintains a strong interest in cricket, golf and gentle fell- walking. Professor Arthur K. Covington, B.Sc., Ph.D, D.Sc. Arthur K. Covington received the degrees of B.Sc., Ph.D and D.Sc. from the University of Reading, where he worked with J. E. Prue on the application of glass electrodes to precise thermodynamic measurements.After a period in industry, he went in 1958 to Kings College in the University of Durham, which in I963 became the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, to join the electrochemistry group of W. F. K. Wynne-Jones. In 1966, he spent 6 months sabbatical leave with R. G. Bates at NBS Washington, USA, working on the heavy water pD scale. In Newcastle, he broadened his solution chemistry interests to include NMR measurements on preferential solvation in mixed solvent electrolyte solutions, and Kaman measurements of dissociation of moderately strong acids. He became Senior Lecturer in 1969, Reader in Physical Chemistry in 1971, and was awarded a personal Chair in Electroanalytical Chemistry in 1985. His contributions to solution chemistry were recognized by the award of the 1983-4 R.A. Robinson Medal and Lecturership in Malaysia, and of the 1987 Sigillum Magnum of Bologna Ilniversity. In 1986, he received the RSC Medal for Electroanalytical Chemistry. As Chairman of a British Standards Institution Technical Committee since 1973, he has been responsible for the preparation of the British Standards on pH measurement, pH meters, glass, ion-selective electrodes and reference electrodes. He has been associated with the IUPAC Commission on Electroanalytical Chemistry since 1979 and is currently UK National Representative. He was responsible for the preparation of the 1985 IUPAC recommendations on pH, and later recommendations on pH determinations on natural waters arising out of a programme of NERC-supported work in association with FBA Ambleside and MBA Plymouth.Re- cently, his work has been concerned with the application of ISEs and ISFETs to clinical measurements, establishing the reference method for ionized calcium in blood plasma, and developing a method for measurement of pH in heart muscle. Since 1983 he1750 Analyst, December 1996, Vol. 121 has been a member of the IFCC Working Group on Selective Electrodes. Professor Covington retired in September 1995 after 37 years in Newcastle and his retirement was marked by a joint Analytical and Faraday Divisions Autumn Meeting Symposium in Sheffield, ‘Ions in Solution’. He continues, as Emeritus Professor, his research in Newcastle and other activities. He recalls wryly, that, at an Electrochemical Group Committee meeting over 3 years ago, he agreed to organise ESEAC ’96 with the statement that he would ‘have plenty of time to do it’ as he would, by then, be retired! Professor Brian J. Birch, B.Sc., Ph.D, C. Chem., FRSC Professor Birch’s biography was published in The Analyst, 1994, 119, 165. At the beginning of 1995, Brian moved full time to the University of Luton, where he holds the Chair in Measurement Science. He is based at the Research Centre within the university, where he is engaged in building the University’s portfolio in this area. In addition to obtaining several research contracts with major industrial customers, he has been awarded recently a ROPA project funded by EPSRC. He is the Division’s 1996 Theobald lecturer. Dr. Arnold G. Fogg, B.Sc., Ph.D, D.Sc., ARTCS, C. Chem., FRSC Dr Fogg’s biography was published in The Analyst, 1994, 119, 165.