About FRS

The International Symposium on Free Radicals (FRS) Organizing Committee is a non-profit organization authorizing and promoting the holding of scientific and educational meetings on a biannual basis on the subject of free radicals, which are important intermediates in complex chemical reactions.

Free radicals play a crucial role in many important chemical reactions involved in combustion and chemical synthesis, as well as in the atmosphere and in interstellar media. The International Symposium on Free Radicals was established over sixty years ago to bring together researchers at the frontier of the field in a wide variety of topics of free radical chemistry with particular emphasis on the spectroscopic identification, characterization, and reaction dynamics of radicals. The composition of the International Advisory Committee guarantees the high scientific level of these meetings.

While the theme of present meetings remains the same as for the previous Symposia, the experimental, theoretical, and computational approaches to free radical investigations have advanced tremendously in recent years. Whereas at that time, the presence or importance of free radicals in a particular process was very difficult to probe, today using modern and sensitive spectroscopic methods, their presence cannot only be proven but the radicals themselves characterized in great detail. Indeed, what once was seen as “through a glass darkly,” has now been illuminated brightly by lasers and other sensitive means of detection.

Moreover, the study of the structural and dynamical properties of free radicals has shed light on a vast variety of physical and chemical processes. These processes span environments from inside every living cell, through the fires of combustion, to the earth’s atmosphere, and beyond to the observable limits of interstellar space. Moreover, free radical research has found applications in new research fields such as atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics. Therefore, the FRS is strongly interdisciplinary with chemists, physicists, astrophysicists and environmental scientists participating, resulting in a conference unique in its creative interactions.