At the time of its establishment in 1966, by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), the Committee on Data for Science and Technol ogy (CODATA) was given the basic mission of promoting and encouraging, on a worldwide basis, the production and distribution of compendia and of collections of critically selected numerical data on substances other forms of interest and importance to science and technology. To accomplish this aim, the following tasks were assigned to CODATA: (1) To ascertain, on a worldwide basis, what work on compilation of numerical data is being carried on in...