Perfumery: the Psychology and Biology of Fragrance

in 1951 Oellinek, 1951), until the conference held at the University of Warwick in 1986 there has previously never been a joint meeting of the industrial and academic disciplines relating to the sense of smell. Each year brings the launchings of many new perfumes; the respective national perfumery societies hold meetings; conferences on the sense of smell take place. These events involve the exchange of important knowledge relating to perfumes but the information remains largely isolated. The Warwick Olfaction Research Group is unusual in that it is led by two people, one of whom is a practising perfumer with an understanding of what it means to be asked to create a perfume, and the other a psychologist with an expertise in the area of emotion. Our interaction (Dodd and Van Toller, 1983) was a potent stimulus to hold the First International Conference on the Psychology of Perfumery. The main purpose of the meeting was to see if there was a framework that would knit the area together into a coherent set of ideas and also to give new perspectives to the study of perfumes. We invited speakers from all areas of the discipline. Thus, the meeting brought together people from the fragrance industry, academics and aromatherapists into a forum for debate. Besides the scientific basis of smell and perfumery, other important topics, including the important one of educating the general public about; olfaction and perfume, were discussed.