Milestone birthdays deserve appropriate celebrations.At his 80th birthday a few years ago,surrounded by close family and old and new friends,my dad* gave a speech that included reflections on the highlights during his lifetime,describing how the people in his life had influenced and shaped those highlights.In pondering a fitting celebration for the Australian Journal of Chemistry's recent 70fh birthday reflecting on the highlights of its lifetime seem an equally fitting way to celebrate-surrounded by friends and family and reflecting on how its scope,its future directions and its reputation have been moulded by its authors over the past 70 years.To do this,we created a virtual issue(www.publish.csiro.au/ch/virtualissue/2482)-a free online collection of 12 papers showcasing the best chemical science from Australasia,along with publishing important international contributions,to share with our chemistry friends until 30 June 2019.The selection of the papers for this virtual issue by AJC's Editorial Board was largely subjective-choices were informed by hard data(citations and downloads),but also by diversity in topic and in authorship.There are many papers that one could argue could and should have made the list but didn't.The paper that first and foremost comes to my mind is the famous(and freely available)series of RAFT Reviews by CSIRO RAFT inventors Ezio Rizzardo,Graeme Moad and San Thang The first of these(Aust.J.Chem.2005,vol.58,pp.379-410),plus three subsequent updates,have accrued more than 3500 citations to date,with the original attracting more than 1600,the most amassed by any paper published in AJC.The contents of the Reviews were largely based on the work of these authors,which with related work was largely responsible for the transformation of free radical polymerisation to the great activity we see today Such was the impact of their work that Rizzardo,along with David Solomon,shared the 2011 Prime Minister's Prize for Science,and the CSIRO group were contenders for the 2014 Nobel Prize.
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