involving only homogenous component reactions to provide credibility to theory and to serve as a learning tool. The best known system, the IO₃^--catalyzed decomposition of H₂O₂, during which the concentrations of I₂ and I^- oscillate and O₂ is produced in pulses, is still not understood mechanistically, and the gas pulses allowed the oscillations to be attributed to supersaturation rather than to homogeneous chemical kinetics. Solving the BZ mechanism provided the unequivocal example that allowed an explosion of progress to be made. Beyond striking the spark, Dick contributed mightily to the blast that followed. Furthermore, he supplied a great deal of personal and intellectual leadership to the new area of research, working hard to assure communication and cooperation, and the opportunity for all, around the world and of all ages and stature, to contribute and to be respected for their contributions. The co-authorships of his papers are remarkable both for the range of his international collaborators and for the order of authors, which nearly always has Dick's younger or international coworkers first. Dick chaired the 1985 Gordon Conference on Oscillations and Dynamic Instabilities, and he was scientific and financial patron of this conference, as well as those in 1988, 1991, and 1994, working to assure participation of young people, especially from Eastern Europe and underdeveloped countries.

The BZ reaction had a shadowy history in Russia before arriving in Dick's hands. Boris Belousov was unable to publish his 1951 discovery of the oscillations because of the second law shibboleth. A. M. Zhabotinsky continued the work in the 1960s and managed to get word of its existence into the West. News of the BZ reaction reached Eugene in October 1969 with Bob Mazo, a University of Oregon chemical physicist just returned from a sabbatical year with Prigogine in Brussels. Upon hearing that essentially nothing was known