Editorial

Abstract

This special issue of the Journal of Chemometrics is devoted to Dr. Steven D. Brown, who retired in 2021. Steve is one of the original leaders of the chemometrics revolution and one of the three founding editors of the Journal of Chemometrics. Steve has also served as one of the three editors in chief of the four-volume series, Comprehensive Chemometrics, published by Elsevier. Steve is the first recipient of the Eastern Analytical Symposium Award in Chemometrics. Steve has also taught the short course on chemometrics at National American Chemical Society meetings for 15 years and has been a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Working Group on Chemometrics since 1987 and the Chemometrics in Analytical Chemistry Program Committee since 1992. Steve has been an active participant at many historic chemometrics conferences, for example, the North American Treaty Organization Advanced Studies Institute on Chemometrics (Cosenza, Italy 1983), Snowbird Conference on Computer-Enhanced Analytical Spectrometry (1994), and International Chemometrics InterNet Conference Computer Network Conference on Chemometrics (1994). Steve has also served as an external referee on promotion and tenure committees for faculty in chemometrics (e.g., Paul Gemperline, Karl Booksh, Sarah Rutan, Barry Lavine, Paul Crilly, William Rayens, Sharon Neal, Peter Wentzel, Peter Harrington, Piet Van Espen, Paul Geladi, Frank Vogt, Rasmus Bro, and Jan Baumbach). Steven Brown obtained his PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Washington in 1978, working in the laboratory of Bruce Kowalski. The title of his doctoral dissertation was “Computer-Controlled Electrochemistry and Pattern Recognition.” In 1978, Steve joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley as an assistant professor and as a principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He moved to Washington State University in 1981 where he was awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor. In 1986, Steve joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Delaware, advancing through the ranks to become a professor, chairman of the Department of Chemistry, and Willis F. Harrington Professor. Over the course of his career, Steve has published over 120 research papers and 22 book chapters and has presented 300 talks at seminars and professional meetings. Steve is best known for his work in Kalman filtering for peak deconvolution, calibration transfer between spectrometers without the need of standards, feedforward and Bayes neural networks for multivariate calibration and classification, wavelets, and more recently, imputation methods and stacked methods for classification and calibration of spectral data. Steve's work highlights the changes that have occurred in the field of chemometrics since its inception in the mid-1970s. Steven Brown is also regarded as an outstanding teacher. Many students who have taken Steve's courses over the years have commented that he explains the material well and his lectures are always thoughtful and well organized. As a thesis and dissertation advisor (31 master's and doctorate students), Steve is regarded as thorough, logical, and clear in his recommendations to guide students in their research. He is always available when needed to address questions and is a good critical reviewer of a student's work. On a personal level, Steve is thoughtful and soft spoken both with his undergraduates and with his graduate students—a true gentleman and scholar. Steve's sense of humor is disarming. From a professional standpoint, Steven Brown and Edmund Malinowski are similar in their accomplishments and their professional relations toward others, and it is appropriate that Steven Brown shares this special issue of the Journal of Chemometrics with Edmund Malinowski. Both pioneers possessed a wealth of knowledge and experience, and their retirement (Steve Brown) or death (Edmund Malinowski) signifies the end of an era for the community. The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1002/cem.3470. No data is available.