The North American Calorimetry Conference has been held annually, every year since 1946, and with one exception, in the USA or Canada. It is probably the longest running series of annual conferences devoted to thermodynamics. Their symposia always contain a significant component of solution chemistry.

This is the fourth special issue of this journal devoted to symposia presented at the North American Calorimetry Conferences. The three previous special issues of our journal were based on symposia held at the 64th Calorimetry Conference (CALCON 2009), the 68th Calorimetry Conference (CALCON 2013), and the 70th Calorimetry Conference (CALCON 2015). These previous special issues were published as, respectively, our December 2010, May 2015, and September 2016 issues. The May 2015 issue was based on a symposium held to honor Robert H. Wood on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The current special issue is mainly based on papers presented at symposia held at the 72rd Calorimetry Conference, which took place from 30 July to 3 August 2017 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.

The organizing committee for this conference were: Conference Chair Richard D. Sheardy (Texas Woman’s college, Denton), Program Chair David P. Remeta (Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey), and Arrangements Chair Gordon Kresheck (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs).

Titles of symposia held at the 72rd Calorimetry Conference and their organizers / chairpersons are: Jack Aviv Biothermodynamics Symposium (Conceição A. Minetti, David P. Remeta), Macromolecular Association and Recognition (Richard D. Sheardy, David P. Remeta), Biopharmaceutical Applications and Drug Discovery (Conceição A. Minetti, Carlos A. Montanari), Thermal Physics in Correlated Electron Systems: From Atoms to Solids (Marcelo Jaime, Krzysztof Gofryk), Colloids and Surfactants (Sandro Keller, Carolyn Vargas), Liquid Solutions over Extended Temperature and Pressure Ranges (Joseph A. Rard, W. Earle Waghorne), Thermodynamic Properties of Ionic Liquids (Magdalena Bendová, Johan Jacquemin), and Databases, Global Analysis, Modeling, and Simulations (Kenneth Kroenlein).

Four of the editors of Journal of Solutions Chemistry were involved with organizing symposia at this conference and we thank David P. Remeta and the other organizers of this conference for inviting us and helping make this special issue possible.