The history of the ISEO: 1969-2019

Abstract

The International Symposium on Essential Oils (ISEO) was initiated by a few enthusiastic scientists in the heart of Europe a half Century ago. Our 50 ISEO meetings have been a great inspiration to scientists working in the field of essential oils and related areas. We have moved from the first applications of gas chromatography (GC) on the volatiles of plants separating an essential oil into a limited number of constituents to the fantastic separations described in publications during the last 5 years. With the much improved separations of the constituents during the 1970s new research areas within the study of essential oils opened up. Single constituents could be isolated, identified by structure elucidation, and by retention indices. The ISEO meetings could benefit from this by changing or better enlarging the research topics to attract more scientists to the meetings. The ISEO symposia became a meeting place where contact across scientific areas was made. Having essential oils as a main topic, but allowing the meetings to be held in places where the interest of essential oils had different goals and aims, allowed the meetings to become varied in the outlook of terpene and volatiles research.