History

The decision to form a Society for Analytical Cytology grew out of a series of Engineering Foundation Conferences on Automated Cytology. As interest in the Society grew it became the International Society for Analytical Cytology and in 2006 was renamed the International Society for Advancement of Cytometry.

During the fifth conference, held 12-17 Dec. 1976, in Pensacola, Florida, the attendees agreed that the formation of a society would provide professional continuity to the field and promote the continuation of the very successful series of conferences. Subsequently, the organizing committee of the sixth conference--held in Schloss Elmau, Bavaria, Germany, in 1978--was empowered to create the Society.

In a meeting held in June 1977, the organizing committee formed a founding executive committee to focus the effort. This committee drafted a statement of long-range purpose:

To promote research, development, and applications in analytical cytology. Analytical cytology is broadly defined as the characterization and measurement of cells and cellular constituents for biological, diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. It embraces components of cytochemistry, cytophysics, anatomy, biology, physiology, pathology, image analysis, instrumentation, clinical laboratory practice and other subjects of relevance.
To facilitate integration of the many disciplines within analytical cytology.
To disseminate knowledge of analytical cytology.
To provide information and advice on those aspects of public policy which are concerned with analytical cytology.

The committee prepared a questionnaire asking for:

Confirmation of continued interest in founding the society
A response to a proposed constitution and bylaws that was drafted by a constitution committee
Suggestions for a slate of nominees to the council should founding the society be approved

The questionnaire was sent to attendees of the previous conferences on automated cytology. The results were very encouraging. Of the 187 people who responded to the questionnaire, all but 11 were in favor of founding and joining a society for analytical cytology.

Out of those, 126 people approved the recommended constitution and bylaws and the proposed slate of nominees. However, 36 people suggested changes to the constitution and bylaws and 38 submitted additional nominations.

Many of the comments made about the constitution and bylaws were incorporated into the final document. No additional nominee received more than two votes and the proposed slate was elected. The officers and councilors of the new Society were:

Officers
President:	Mortimer L. Mendelsohn
President-Elect:	Myron R. Melamed
Honorary Past-President:	Thomas M. Jovin
Secretary/Treasurer:	L. Scott Cram
Editor:	Brian H. Mayall


Councilors
Peter H. Bartels	J. S. Ploem
Mack J. Fulwyler	James H. Tucker
Klaus Goerttler	Marvin A. Van Dilla
Paul Mullaney	Leon L. Wheeless
Ian T. Young

The results of the questionnaire were sent to potential members of the Society, along with an invitation to become a charter member. The constitution and bylaws were voted on at the Schloss Elmau conference in 1978.

At the first business meeting of the Society, the members decided that a committee should be formed to review the constitution and bylaws and suggested changes to the membership by mail.

The revised constitution and bylaws were discussed at the next business meeting (at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California, USA in 1979) and the final version submitted to the membership for approval by mail ballot.

The proposed constitution and bylaws were approved by a wide margin and became official in early 1979. The Society was incorporated as a nonprofit corporation on Oct. 6, 1980.

Planning for Automated Cytology VII was underway. The council had decided to hold the first Society meeting under the sponsorship of the Engineering Foundation. This was also the last conference the foundation sponsored. Beginning with the Wentworth, New Hampshire, conference in 1981, the Society sponsored and organized its own conferences.

Formation of the Society

A History of the International Society for Analytical Cytology

by: Phillip N. Dean

The invention of the Coulter cell counter led eventually to the development in the 1960s of flow cytometry, the rapid measurement of cells and cell organelles in liquid suspension. The addition of fluorescence measurements to the volume and absorption measurements available on medical devices led to a great expansion of applications in the biomedical sciences. In 1970 the Engineering Foundation organized the International Research Conference on Engineering in Medicine: Automated Multiphasic Health Testing, in Davos, Switzerland. The organizer of this conference was Sandford (Sandy) Cole, Director of Conferences for the Engineering Foundation. As a part of the conference, Sandy invited a small number of people to a workshop on automatic cytology to discuss this evolving field. Participants at this conference held lively discussions on the subject and reported that, although the new field showed great promise, much needed to be done. Accordingly, Sandy agreed to organize an Engineering Foundation–sponsored meeting in Henniker, New Hampshire in July 1970.

Thus began a long series of meetings held on the subject of analytical cytology (also called automated cytology). The Henniker meeting is popularly known as Analytical Cytology I; the actual title of subsequent conferences has varied considerably, usually containing the words analytical cytology or some variant thereof. For reference, the most recent meeting of the International Society for Analytical Cytology (ISAC), in San Diego, California in 2003, is known as ISAC XXI. Note that this was not the 21st meeting of the society. It was the 21st formal meeting on the subject of analytical cytology and the 16th meeting of the society. The Engineering Foundation continued to sponsor the series of meetings through the 1979 society conference in Asilomar, California. The first society congress completely organized and managed by the society was held in Wentworth, New Hampshire in 1981.

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History and founding editor's perspectives of Cytometry

by: Brian H. Mayall

Cytometry, the journal of the International Society for Analytical Cytology (ISAC), had its genesis, like the ISAC, in the series of conferences on automatic cytology sponsored by the Engineering Foundation in the 1970s. The history of ISAC has been well documented by Phillip Dean in a previous article and in one appearing in this issue (1, 2). My personal perspectives on Cytometry complement the histories of ISAC and the editorial I wrote in 1997 when I stepped down as editor (3).

Automatic cytology started to evolve in the late 1960s as an interdisciplinary science exploiting advances in electronic, computer, and chemical technologies to enable rapid and quantitative analysis of large numbers of individual cells. Frequently, early research was driven by potential applications to problems in cancer diagnosis (the Pap smear), chromosome analysis (cytogenetics), and blood cell analysis (hematology) and to a wide range of problems in basic biology. This early work was reported at various national and international conferences, particularly those sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences and the International Academy of Cytology.

The series of Engineering Foundation Conferences (EFC) on automatic cytology first provided a coherent and ongoing forum where scientists and engineers from diverse disciplines could meet to exchange ideas. These conferences were initially small and by invitation only. They were organized according to the strict dictates of Dr. Sanford (Sandy) S. Cole, director of the EFC. Afternoons were always unscheduled to leave much time for informal interactions among the participants; likewise, presentations at the formal sessions had to allow ample time for discussion and interaction between the presenter and the audience. Open and free explorations of ideas were encouraged; for this reason, no record was made from the early conferences. But by the Third Automatic Cytology Conference, held at the Asilomar Conference Center, California, in December 1973, participants felt that they were generating so much energy and excitement that they wished to reach a wider audience, particularly their colleagues who were unable to attend the conference.

Paul J. Anderson, editor of the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry, invited me to be guest editor for a special edition devoted entirely to papers from the Third Conference (4). Most presenters submitted manuscripts that underwent peer review. The special issue contained 39 papers, many of which remain relevant today. Authors included many luminaries of the ISAC and the field: Sam Latt, Leon Wheeless, Mike Melamed, Frank Traganos, Lew Kamentsky, Mort Mendelsohn, Walter Sandritter, Mack Fulwyler, Harry Crissman, Tom and Donna Jovin, Joe Gray, Peter Bartels, George Weid, and Bas Ploem. This issue also was used to introduce the Technicon Hemalog D system, thereby setting a precedent in which our publications are used to introduce commercial systems and the innovative science and engineering that they embrace.

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