FEBS Congress History

One of the primary goals of FEBS when it was founded in 1964 was to facilitate European meetings in biochemistry, and indeed its ‘1st Meeting’ was held that year in London with an international mix of speakers and over 1000 attendees. Building on this success, a similar ‘Meeting’ was then organized in turn by different member Societies of FEBS in the following years, each Society and the event’s city and country bringing a unique flavour to the gathering.

Notably, the Meetings were held both in Western Europe and in Central and Eastern Europe during the times of the iron curtain, and an openness to reach most corners of the FEBS geographical area continued in subsequent years. Before 2004, some years were skipped or had alternative narrower meetings to make way for the triennial conferences of the International Union of Biochemistry (IUB; later IUBMB), but for the past over 20 years the event has been planned annually, with FEBS collaborating with IUBMB every few years for a joint meeting. FEBS also joined forces with EMBO in 2014. From 2004, the ‘Meeting’ took the grander title of ‘Congress’.

Over the 60 years since the first FEBS scientific event, Congress topics have expanded to a wider spectrum of molecular and cellular life science research, physical slides and overheads in lecture rooms have been replaced by stylish ppts and fancy animations, a printed abstract book is now superseded by a mobile app, and the event has become more global. But core elements remain: for the milestone 50th edition, we still look forward to gathering together face to face in a special location in the European area to understand, explain and be excited by new developments in our own area of expertise and the wider field, and to share all this with our fellow researchers from many different countries.