Session B10: Invited Session: Celebrating 100 Years of Physical Review at APS

In the Beginning...

Physical Review was founded at Cornell University in 1893, by two professors, Edward L. Nichols and Ernest Merritt. Both were educated in Germany, and were familiar with the differences in publications abroad. They were enthusiastic about the idea of an American publication devoted entirely to physics. They fortunately had the full support of the then President of Cornell, J. Gould Shurman, who arranged for an initial grant of {\$}500, and eventually, for a first year total of {\$}2500. The founding editors were soon joined by Frederick Bedell, who remained an Editor into the 1920's. This talk will follow the progress (and otherwise) of the journal through the formation of the American Physical Society in 1899 and the transfer of its operation from Cornell to the APS in 1913.   

The American Reception of the Quantum as Seen by the Physical Review, 1900-1927

This talk tells the story of the ``American awakening'' to quantum theory seen through the pages of the \textit{Physical Review}. It begins with the journal's first mentions of Planck and the quantum, follows the story through publication of the first papers on experiment and theory, and concludes just after Schr\"{o}dinger's 1926 \textit{Physical Review} article on wave mechanics -- which reflected the Austrian physicist's realization that at last there existed a large enough American audience interested in theoretical developments of quantum mechanics to make such an article worth writing and publishing.   

``Your Most Distinguished Contributor'': Einstein and the Physical Review

Einstein began to publish in the Physical Review after he began working with his first American research assistant, Nathan Rosen. They submitted three landmark papers together to the journal. These papers and their reception are discussed, along with the remarkable story of Einstein's umbrage at the referee report he received in response to his third submission. Although the referee was vindicated and Einstein eventually had to reverse his position, he never submitted a research paper to the Physical Review again. The identity of the referee, as learned from the Review's own records, will be revealed and Einstein's subsequent relationship with the journal will be discussed.   

Bringing the Physical Review into the Digital Age

Efforts to make the entire contents of the Physical Review available digitally began early in the 1990's and closely tracked the development of the World Wide Web itself. Not satisfied with just publishing electronic versions of newly published material, the APS also embarked on one of the first systematic digitizations of the entire contents of a major series of journals in any discipline. While all APS journals were online by 1997 and the backfile archive was completed in early 2002, the journals have continued to grow and adapt as the digital environment has matured. This talk will give an account of the evolution of APS journals through the digital transition, from boxes of backup tapes to the full-fledged, invaluable online resource it is today.   

Physical Review: a family of journals

The expansion of research in physics in the last 100 years has been reflected in the expansion of the Physical Review(PR). Reviews of Modern Physics was the first ``new'' journal, starting in 1929. Physical Review Letters commenced in 1958, and was the first ``letters'' type of journal for important new results in all fields. By 1970 the Physical Review itself had grown so large that it was necessary to separate it by field into manageable volumes: PRA, PRB, PRC and PRD, and subsequently PRE, which was split off from PRA. More recently, two Special Topics journals for accelerator physics and physics education were pioneers of the open access business model, and the newest member of the family, Physical Review X, continues this trend. PRX is broad scope and very selective, setting it well above many of the new open access journals with a review standard of ``not incorrect.'' Some possible future directions for the Physical Review journals will be discussed.