The story
The Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) were initiated by Neil Gordon while at Johns Hopkins University. The forerunner of the conferences were the summer sessions held at the chemistry department in the late 1920s. By 1931 this had evolved into a graduate seminar that was also attended by external participants.(subscription required)
In the mid-1930s, GRC moved to Gibson Island, Maryland. In 1947, GRC moved to New London, New Hampshire, holding 10 conferences. In the 1960s, there were only a hundred attendees. GRC expanded into Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and Rhode Island and as of May 2023, hosts more than 20 meetings per week during the summer.
In 1963, GRC began the "West Coast winter series" January through May, when the Polymers Conference moved to Santa Barbara, California, in 1980, to Ventura, California, and in 2009, expanding to Galveston, Texas. As of 2023 there are more than 70 winter meetings each year.
Starting in 1990, GRC expanded outside of the U.S. into Italy, Switzerland, Spain and Hong Kong.
In 1958 newspapers reported the conference was "restricted to men who are internationally recognized as the top experts in their fields".
In 2005, 28 percent of attendees were female.
As of May 2023, GRC had diversity initiatives for "women and all underrepresented groups [...] within its 400 communities" for diversity, equity and inclusion.
From Wikipedia’s article on Gordon Research Conferences, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4