Our History

Dr. Pierre Crabbé (1928-1987),
IOCD Founder
Photo courtesy of Marie-Noëlle del Alamo

IOCD Scientists at a Working Session
Front row: M. James Cosentino, Jean-Marie Lehn (President), Robert Maybury (Executive Director)
Back row: Walter Benson, Fred Opperdoes, Stephen Matlin, Lester Mitscher

IOCD WAS CREATED in 1981, when Pierre Crabbé, a Belgian chemist, invited a group of distinguished scientists from 15 countries to meet at UNESCO, Paris, to consider giving sustained support to the research of chemists in developing countries. Crabbé in 1973 had worked with Carl Djerassi at the Syntex company in Mexico--work that culminated in the synthesis of the first steroid oral contraceptive, the now well-known birth control pill. Moving to Europe,Crabbé then worked as a chemist consultant for WHO, traveling worldwide with a team of MD's specialized in the field of "population control". His work in Mexico and then in developing countries for WHO had opened Crabbé's eyes to the many barriers that hinder the efforts by scientists in these less privileged countries to carry on research: inadequate laboratory equipment, a lack of up-to-date books and journals, long periods of isolation from mainstream scientific activities, etc. His vision of how these barriers might be lowered was to engage scientists from developing countries in collaborative research with scientists from industrialized countries. This is the vision that led to the birth of IOCD.

The founding group drafted a charter and bylaws and deposited these with the Belgian Ministry of Justice. They then elected officers: as President, Glenn Seaborg, a Nobel Laureate chemist from Berkeley, California, USA; as Vice President and Treasurer, Elkan Blout, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, USA; also as Vice Presidents, C.N.R. Rao, Head of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, and Sune Bergström, Nobel Laureate chemist from Sweden.

Finally, they set up two scientific Working Groups, one on development of compounds for male fertility regulation, and one on development of anti-infectives against tropical diseases. These groups enabled chemists in developed and developing countries to network through IOCD-sponsored site visits and conferences.

Pierre Crabbé was tragically killed in a car accident in 1987, but IOCD officers soon found a replacement for Crabbé in Robert Maybury, a retired chemist from UNESCO then working at the World Bank in Washington, DC.

WITHIN TWO YEARS, Maybury organized two additional working groups, one on plant chemistry and one on environmental analytical chemistry, convincing outstanding chemists to accept leadership of these new groups. Then, in 1992, the US National Academy of Sciences invited IOCD to assist Professor Thomas Eisner of Cornell University to set up a global body that could carry on expansion of bioprospecting in developing countries. IOCD accepted this challenge and organized the Biotic Exploration Fund (a name insisted upon by Professor Eisner) as an IOCD working group responsible for promoting bioprospecting in developing countries.

In 1996, at the request of the CSIR of South Africa, IOCD helped lay the foundation for a national bioprospecting initiatives in South Africa, and in 1998, IOCD worked with the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya, to establish that country’s bioprospecting program. IOCD is currently working with the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology to establish bioprospecting in that country.

In 2004, IOCD established the Books for International Development project to help organize the transfer of tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of journals and technical materials to developing countries.

For a more complete history of IOCD published in Chemistry International, click here.