Joining nations 1947-1990

50

JOINING NATIONS

HRH The Princess Benedikte of Denmark opening the 1977 Assembly. On the left is B Koch, Chairman of the Danish Organising Comminee.

Although no one was aware of it at the time, the 1977 Assembly was the last to be attended by two of the dominant figures in the first 30 years of the IIW's life. One was Andre Leroy, the former Scien– tific and Technical Secretary, who had retired from his post as Director of the French Institut de Soudure and who was to die the following year. The other was his British counterpart, Richard Weck, who in the same year retired from his position as Director of The Welding Institute. Dr Weck had been present at the foundation of the IIW, had served for nearly 20 years as the first Chairman of Commission X and was a long-standing and highly critical member of the Governing Council and the Technical Committee. Although little love was lost between the two men, they each represented in their different ways the pioneering enthusiasm of the founding generation of IIW of which they were almost the last active survivors. The Assembly in Denmark coincided with the penultimate year of the Presidency of Professor Jakobsson and thus with the election of his successor, Dr U Girardi. Dr Girardi was Secretary-General of the Italian Istituto della Saldatura and had for many years been a close collaborator of the former President, Dr U Guerrera. As such he had extensive experience of the work of the Commissions, notably II and XV, as well as of work within the ISO. Diligence and intelli– gence were two of the prerequisites for working with Dr Guerrera, so