PRL Celebrates 50th Anniversary Year With Retrospective of Milestone Letters
April 22, 2008
Physical Review Letters (PRL) turns 50 in July 2008. As announced by Gene D. Sprouse, editor-in-chief of the American Physical Society (APS), which publishes PRL, the celebrations include the presentation each week of milestone PRL articles that made long-lived contributions to physics by announcing significant discoveries or by initiating new areas of research. A number of these articles report on work that was later recognized with a Nobel Prize for one or more of the authors.
Martin Blume
Said Sprouse, "This retrospective is an excellent way to highlight the amazing quantity and quality of work reported in PRL and the key role of this journal in spreading new data and ideas so quickly. We are fortunate in having my predecessor as APS editor-in-chief, Martin Blume, as editor of the retrospective, with the assistance of PRL Editor Yonko Millev. Marty's wide knowledge of physics and long experience as APS editor make him especially well suited to this task."
Blume's role in the PRL retrospective is of particular interest to BNL, where he served for more than 40 years in a distinguished career of science and administration. He is now a BNL Senior Physicist Emeritus.
"To look through even part of the impressive body of past PRL articles is an extraordinary intellectual pleasure that more than balances the effort involved," said Blume.
In each year several thousand Letters are published, so the editors decided to use as a first filter the 40 most cited in each year - a reasonable task as all APS publications are now online and searchable, said Blume - and, as a second filter, the 40 most downloaded in the last five years - which gives a feel for the 'long legs' of an article.
"Some very important work will not be featured, but this is inevitable given the breadth and high quality of PRL's contents," he said. Providing background information and a summary for each selected Letter is another challenge Blume enjoys. "It's easier for articles that later won a Nobel Prize, but other Letters can be very significant and in some ways even more interesting," he said.
The retrospective series started on January 2, 2008, with two important Letters from PRL in 1958. The next week saw the selection of a Letter from 1959, and so on. Each entry provides a summary of the selected Letter and a link to the Letter and to more information. The series, which will continue through the year 2000, can be followed from the PRL website.
Some PRL History
Sam Goudsmit (L) and Simon Pasternack
Physical Review first came to BNL in 1951, when the American Physical Society appointed BNL's Physics Department Chair Sam Goudsmit as Managing Editor, and BNL physicist Simon Pasternack as Assistant Editor. Thus began a long history of the connection between the Lab and Phys Rev.
In 1958, Goudsmit founded Physical Review Letters (PRL) as a separate journal, which has since achieved fame and high prestige. The offices of both journals remained at BNL until the need for space, both on the part of the journals and of the Lab, became too pressing. At that time, a new building was constructed across the road, off William Floyd Parkway.
In this Golden Anniversary of PRL, many celebrations are taking place, including the Milestone Letters (see accompanying story), articles on "Successful Letters," a timeline, a 50th anniversary symposium at Stony Brook on June 27, and a special symposium in China on July 8, jointly held by the APS and the Chinese Physical Society. A complete listing is available at the PRL anniversary website.
2008-649 | INT/EXT | Newsroom
