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LINKING PEOPLE, JOINING NATIONS
need to have conformity in their use across all areas of expertise in IIW. It entailed a detailed
and exhaustive exercise to ensure, from a welding perspective, that everyone was using the
correct terminology, whether in written standards, documents, research papers or in any
other forms of communication used by IIWWorking Units. The importance of C-VI to the
other Commissions can be gauged by the fact that it was one of the first set up by IIW in
1948 with the express mandate to compile a
Multilingual Collection of Terms
, the first book
of which was for the gas welding section in 1952.
38
Prof. Pavel Stular (Slovenia) was a stalwart of C-VI and after becoming
Chair in 1976 he also took on the role of editor and publisher of the collection,
leading to him being awarded the prestigious Edström Medal in 1989. Mr
Dietmar Rippegather (Germany), Chair of C-VI 2002-2011, together with
Ms Sheila Thomas (UK) with responsibility for IIW’s thesaurus, also did
outstanding work in the collection of terms obtained from international,
regional and national standards in order to avoid the duplication of much
work through its multiple language modern databases. Dr
Glenn H. Ziegenfuss (USA) was to continue the excellent
work of C-VI when he succeeded Rippegather as Chair
in 2011.
Dolby, who became Chair of SG-RES in 1989, was a significant
contributor to the early work of this group and was to identify priority
areas for research in Europe, for instance, in a period where research
funding was problematic. He also highlighted a list of drivers from
an industry workshop held in the USA in 1998 that he believed to
be appropriate for developing countries.
39
These drivers were
leading to specific trends in research and technology needs that
had changed in emphasis over the previous five years – changes
that research institutes and other research organisations needed to be acutely aware of.
The influence of SG-RES was to be ever constant through the presence of Prof. Dr-
Ing. Luisa Quintino (Portugal) who completed three three-year terms as Chair of SG-RES
in 2012. The group’s main aim was to foster welding research and collaboration between
international researchers and this was largely achieved through meetings of the group
which occurred each year at Annual Assemblies. These meetings had a significant role in
not only collating information about research that was being done by IIW members but also
in providing guidance regarding identification for new directions in research as well as the
promotion of latest developments through colloquia and other such activities.
Prof. Dr-Ing. Jan Pilarczyk, of the Polish Welding Institute, was another solid
contributor to the work of SG-RES and was to emphasise the difficulties of a developing
country in conducting research. He highlighted the problems in such countries of obtaining
Richard Dolby