The following appeared in the June, 1968 issue of Newsletter.

Frank Propst, who was the Editor of JVST, played a large part in persuading surface scientists that AVS could become a suitable and appropriate home for them. He recalled, in an AVS video interview, that he wrote to many of them to urge them to support this position but that several considered that "a technical society" was not suitable for this sophisticated science. In fact, his position was so unpopular in some laboratories that he agreed with Paul Redhead, who was AVS President in 1967-68, that his cause would be helped if he was not the chair of the new division. Peter Hobson was appointed as Chair of the new SSD, with Bob Park as Vice-Chair.

The Surface Science Division (SSD) was founded in 1969. At the 15th National AVS Symposium in 1968, the following resolution was passed at an open meeting with no dissenting votes.

"This meeting recommends the formation of a Surface Science Division of the American Vacuum Society. The overall objective of the Surface Science Division shall be to provide within the Society a formal focal point for persons interested in a broad variety of the areas of surface science. It is recognized that the activities of such a broadly based division may overlap the activities of organizations outside, and perhaps even inside, the American Vacuum Society. Every effort toward co-operative enterprises should be made."

Three main policy decisions were made by the committee, which consisted of the following in addition to the Chair and Vice-Chair: W.T. Peria, University of Minnesota, J.R. Arthur, Bell Telephone Labs, C.B. Duke, University of Illinois, Urbana, P.J. Estrup, Brown University, T.E. Madey, National Bureau of Standards, N.R. Whetten, General Electric R & D Center, and J.N. Zemel, University of Pennsylvania. (N.B. Four of these became AVS President).

(1) They were opposed to a proliferation of National meetings on Surface Science and would strive to reduce the number of such meetings to a minimum consistent with adequate interaction between surface scientists. They offered to exchange with any other groups information on plans for future meetings. They offered to undertake the maintenance of a calendar of surface science conferences, to be published in each issue of JVST. Anyone wishing to activate these proposals should contact the Secretary-Treasurer.

(2) They would support and co-sponsor Local meetings on Surface Science in conjunction with any group in AVS, provided these meetings were truly Local and not, in effect, National.

(3) They would attempt to organize a truly International Symposium on Surface Science in conjunction with the 5th International Vacuum Congress scheduled for Boston in 1971.

The Division Chairs were:

It was announced in the AVS Newsletter in 1969 that "Discussions are currently in progress concerning the general course to be taken by the division, and in particular the nature of the Symposium on Surface Science to be held at the 16th AVS Symposium. You are invited to contribute your views on these matters to any members of the Executive Committee. A number of views have already been received and these have been most useful." A special enclosure with the Newsletter stated that

"A Surface Science Division of the American Vacuum Society has recently been formed and is now seeking members from the surface science community at large. Activities of the division will include an Annual Surface Science Symposium running concurrently with the annual symposium of the American Vacuum Society, co-operation with other organizations interested in surface science, reduced group rates . to journals, support for local chapters of the division, and general encouragement of all enterprises in surface science of interest to members. Membership in the division is $2.00, requires membership in the American Vacuum Society ($10.00), the total annual fee being $12.00."

Peter Hobson, who served as the first SSD chair, and Al Czanderna, recalled the circumstances of that first Symposium on Surface Science at the 16^th National Symposium in Seattle in 1969 in the Newsletter [Hobson, P.J. & Czanderna, A.W. (1999) AVS Newsletter July August, 4–5].

By 1968 two things were clear: (1) a detailed study of surfaces required ultrahigh vacuum (UHV, i.e., P£10-11 Pascal or <10-9 Torr) to maintain a clean surface, once cleaned; and (2) the design of devices for the production and measurement of UHV required a knowledge of surfaces. This is because surface reactions involving molecules, electrons, ions, and photons vastly outnumber gas phase reactions at these pressures. This natural synergism was the motivation for forming the SSD of the AVS. Translating this idea into a working reality was not simple.

The first paper about Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) was published in 1968, and the most developed instruments in surface science at the time were Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED), field ion microscopy (FIM), and the field emission microscope (FEM). The future plethora of instruments requiring UHV (XPS, AES, ISS, SIMS, RHEED, MBE, EELS, UPS, RBS, etc.), which constitute our modern surface science arsenal for studying surface structure, composition, and adsorbate (overlayer) binding, was only dimly foreseen.

Figure 1 shows a "Propst" diagram connecting input probes and the solid surface in a UHV environment. Lichtman added detail to the diagram as "particles-in and particles-out" to elucidate the large number of surface compositional methods.1 The embryonic community of surface scientists working in these areas did not have a formal organizational focus, except perhaps the Nottingham Conference on Physical Electronics held annually at MIT and the LEED theory seminar group.

Paul Redhead was President of the AVS in early 1968, and he asked one of us (Hobson) to assess the level of support for an SSD in the AVS. The first move was to contact five personal colleagues by phone and mail, i.e., Al Czanderna (Clarkson University), Al MacRae (Bell Labs), Bob Park (Sandia), Bill Peria (University of Minnesota), and Frank Propst (University of Illinois), to establish an ad hoc committee. This group then selected about 50 laboratories around the world, and a letter was sent to each to test their reaction to forming an SSD in the AVS. Contacts were also made with the appropriate divisions of the APS and ACS. Essentially two points were made: (1) surface scientists would be welcomed into the AVS, as having a synergistic relationship to vacuum, in general, and UHV in particular; and (2) the AVS already had an operating framework of an annual symposium, integrated closely with an annual exhibition of the latest equipment, as well as the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology (JVST). The cross-fertilization could be valuable to surface scientists. Responses to the inquiry were split: 52% favored the establishment of an SSD in the AVS, but 48% preferred an independent organization or one linking surface science with other established societies, such as the American Chemical Society. In this latter group, the view was that the AVS would not have sufficiently high academic standards for them!

The ad hoc committee reported its findings in early 1969 to Jim Lafferty, who became President on October 31, 1968, 2 with the comment that the committee was willing to attempt the formation of an SSD, but that it could not guarantee success. Lafferty, after consultation and action by the AVS Board of Directors (BOD), quickly gave the committee the green light. The BOD not only recommended forming an SSD of the AVS but also appointed all the members of the ad hoc committee as the Temporary Executive Committee (TEC) until elections could be held in Seattle in 1969, and added E.E. Donaldson (Washington State University), R.W. Hoffman (Case-Western Reserve University), J.H. Singleton (Westinghouse Laboratories), and G.K. Wehner (University of Minnesota) to the Executive Committee; J.P. Hobson, F.M. Propst, and R.L. Park were appointed as Chair, Vice-Chair, and Secretary, respectively.3 The TEC immediately began the task of organizing the highest caliber three-day program in surface science that they could for the National Symposium of the AVS in Seattle in October 1969. The TEC determined that the entire program would be invited, i.e., invited lectures of 40 minutes each and invited "contributed" papers of 20 minutes each.4 No preference would be given to members of the AVS; the hope was that the speakers and others would join the AVS as a result of the program. The concept of a showcase program to launch the SSD was predominant. All proceeded smoothly and an outstanding international program was assembled.

Confidence was on the rise, but a totally unforeseen and potentially catastrophic problem lay ahead. The AVS symposium was held at the World’s Fair site, which was not organized physically as are the convention centers of today. The AVS Program Committee did not meet on the site before the Symposium. When Hobson (Program Chair for the Surface Science Symposium) arrived at the site late Tuesday afternoon with the Symposium to begin the following morning, he was horror-struck! The Surface Science Symposium had been allocated a small room (O-212) on the second floor of the opera house, distinctly remote from the main auditoriums where all other AVS Symposium papers and the equipment exhibition were being held.

He wondered, "Was this welcoming surface scientists into the AVS? Was this the best the SSD could provide as an example of a practical synergism with the rest of the AVS?" In some panic, Hobson scurried around to find someone with authority, he cannot remember whom, and said that the room assignment for the Surface Science Symposium was completely unsatisfactory and that the location, all the chairs, audiovisual arrangements, etc., had to be changed to another more central site, which amazingly was available. He recalls spending a restless night wondering if it was really possible that these orders, issued late Tuesday, would be executed by Wednesday morning. Believe it or not they were! The meeting proceeded smoothly for all three days. It was considered a great success and in essence the SSD was on its way.

The TEC was replaced with elected officers (Hobson, Park, and Peria) and the first elected Surface Science Division Executive Committee (J. Arthur, C. Duke, P. Estrup, T. Madey, R. Whetten, and J. Zemel).5 Bylaws were written, a membership chair appointed, and new members were attracted into the SSD. Bob Park was elected Chair for 1971 and Charlie Duke was elected Chair for 1972. By 1972, the SSD had 215 members, about 10% of the current membership. The new Executive Committee, with special thanks to Duke, made good on its commitment to organize a truly international symposium on surface science,5 which was held in 1971 jointly with the 18th AVS National Symposium in Boston. Czanderna began short courses in surface analysis and surface science in 1975 and 1984, respectively. He and instructors that he and others recruited have now taught hundreds of attendees.

Thus, the SSD of the AVS was begun. Currently, the Surface Science Division has 2,300 members and the Applied Surface Science Division, which was formed in the 1980s, has 1,900 members. Jim Murday published Figure 2 in a President’s report 6 and attributed the growth in the AVS from 2,000 to more than 5,500 members to "Surface Science and Electronic Materials." We are delighted with the helpful role we were able to play in forming the SSD and with the impact it has had and will have for the AVS in the future.

References

1. D. Lichtman, in A.W. Czanderna, ed., Methods of Surface Analysis, Elsevier, 1975, pp. 39–73.

2. J. Vac. Sci. Technol., 5 (1968) p. 210.

3. J. Vac. Sci. Technol., 6 (1969) pp. 274–275.

4. J. Vac. Sci. Technol., 6 (1969) pp. 892–898.

5. J. Vac. Sci. Technol., 7 (1970) p. 286.

Charlie Duke has recounted the technical aspects of the growth in surface science in an article "The birth and evolution of surface science: Child of the union of science and technology" as part of the special series of Inaugural Articles by members of the National Academy of Sciences elected on May 1, 2001. It was published in PNAS, April 1, 2003, vol. 100, no. 7, pp 3858–3864, and is available on the web at www.pnas.org_cgi_doi_10.1073_pnas.0730358100.

In 1981, an award for the best student paper at the Symposium was initiated, largely through the efforts of Morton Traum, who was due to serve as the Division Chair in 1983 but died before he took office. After his death, the award was named the Morton Traum Award. The names of the winners were inscribed on a plaque. When all the spaces on the original plaque were filled in 2002, the plaque was given to Morton Traum’s family during the Awards Ceremony in 2002. The names of all the winners were inscribed on a new plaque with space for fifty names. Until 1992, the award was given for the best oral presentation; then it was awarded to the best paper, either oral or poster presentation.

The Division also provided travel support for students to attend the annual Symposium until 1999 when such Divisional support was replaced by the Dorothy S and Earl M Hoffman Travel Grants. For example, in 1979 eight travel scholarships to the 26^th Symposium in New York City were given to P. C. Karulkar, Phiilip Russell, Raymond Gorte, Daniel Richmond, John J Bartow, David Welkie, Normal F.T. Hall; Gorte and Welkie also received AVS Scholarships.