How to take over a journal without trying: Annals of Science, 1974

Summary

I became the editor of this journal in 1974, under rather strange circumstances and with no prior warning. The circumstances and their background are described here.

Contents

1. The predicament of a biographer …… 239

2. The predicament of a journal …… 240

1. The predicament of a biographer

One of the most formidable tasks for an historian of any kind is to determine cause and motivations, to answer ‘why?’ questions as well as ‘what?’ questions. In the unlikely event that somebody in the future should wonder why the editorship of the senior British journal in the history of science passed in 1974 into the hands of a young man who was not a member of the profession, then his chances of determining cause are virtually nonexistent. For the main reasons were these:

• Great Britain did not then enjoy a diplomatic relations with the German Democratic Republic;

• Biographical history was deeply disliked in influential sectors of the history of science;

• I lived in North London.

In the late 1960s my research work in the history of mathematics was focussing upon Georg Cantor, the chief inventor of set theory from the 1870s onwards. While some historical research had been carried out on his theory, nothing had been done on his long career as a professor at Halle University. So my wife and I spent part of the summer of 1969 in the German Democratic Republic, working in the University archives. The staff was very cooperative and microfilmed any document that I wished to have; but the lack of diplomatic relations between our two countries prevented me from paying for the microfilms. So the archivists asked me to buy some specified microfilms from the United States General Service Administration and post them over, when they would send me my microfilms free of charge. This swap system worked well except that the last microfilm never arrived; thus when I wrote my career biography article on Cantor, some details were missing.

More serious a problem regarding its publication, however, was the fact that the article was biographical: the sociology of science was on the rampage to the extent that some history of science journals refused even to referee it.1 I was advised to try Annals of Science, on the grounds that they would publish anything. Accordingly I send my paper there, and had it accepted.

Then the final microfilm turned up in the post, and I realized that my paper needed additions in several places. I had negotiated with Dr. N. H. de V. Heathcote over it, and I told them of the changes that I needed to make. Luckily my manuscript was still at his house; and moreover he lived in Muswell Hill, not far from me in Barnet. So we agreed that I should come down to his house and make the appropriate alterations. These were done without difficulty; but in revising my manuscript I noticed that he had mis-edited the way in which I had cited specific files in the Halle University Archives and also in the Prussian Ministry of Culture Archives; correcting back these references took quite a time. The paper duly appeared in 1971.2

The first British supporters of Cantor's somewhat controversial theory had included W. H. and G. C. Young, who were notable also as the first husband and wife partnership in the history of mathematics. I had come to know their daughter, Dr R. C. H. Tanner; she held her parents’ archives, which included letters from Cantor. I had used these letters in my paper, and I realized that this archive itself deserved some attention; so I composed a long biographical article on their careers and relationship. Once again the predicament of publication had to be faced; once again Annals of science came to the rescue, although Dr. Heathcote insisted that such a long article be split into two parts. However, after the article was typeset he decided that it could be published in one issue; so the last 40 pages had to be rejigged. It appeared in 1972.3

2. The predicament of a journal

While there were or had been quite a few journals for the histories of the various sciences, few of them were general, and none of those were run in Britain, when Annals of Science was mooted in 1936.4 The initiative was taken by Dr Douglas McKie of University College London, and Mr Henry Robinson, the librarian of the Royal Society, together with Dr Harcourt Brown, a Canadian historian of science who had been researching in London in recent summers and would serve as the North American representative. They offered the journal to Taylor & Francis, who accepted it without requiring any of the trio to be the editor, although McKie approximated to such a role in practice.

The journal carried the subtitle ‘an international quarterly review in the history of science and technology since the Renaissance’. Over the years it published a good quality of work, largely internalist in character. After McKie died in 1967, the function of editor, though not the office, passed to Heathcote, who had joined the editorial board in 1952.5 Among other recent editorial appointments, Dr R. E.W. Maddison of the Royal Astronomical Society had joined in 1966 and was the book reviews editor; and in 1969 the board had acquired an extra North American and a European representative, respectively the historian of technology Harold Sharlin and the historian of physics Hans Kangro.

As the history of science developed and broadened in the 1960s the journal seemed never to reject anything; the pressure of papers led in 1972 to an increase in the number of issues per year from four to six. The strain upon Heathcote was proving to be formidable at his advanced age, and Taylor & Francis had been asking him repeatedly to obtain some assistance in the editing, since so many articles were requiring substantial amounts of resetting at proof stage. Eventually in August 1973 he agreed to look into the matter—and he got in touch with me because, as he told me at the time, I was the only author that he had ever met! He asked me to help him edit the manuscripts for publication; I declined, on the grounds that Taylor & Francis should provide such assistance, but I added that if he wanted me to join the editorial board, then I was prepared to offer such help as part of a broader remit. Accepting my reaction, he resolved that we should have a ‘party’ with Maddison to determine future plans. He also told me that the journal had never had an editor as such.

Over the next ten months the only consequence was that Heathcote sent me four manuscripts to referee. Then at the end of May 1974 I received a phone call from Dr John Cheney, the house editor at Taylor & Francis responsible for Annals of Science. The first of the year's six issues was about be published (the government's imposition of the three-day week was partly responsible for the delay); I was coming on the editorial board, and could I please provide an academic address to put on the inside front cover? I stated that I was very unhappy with the contents of the journal, and he indicated that Taylor & Francis were of like mind; so I agreed to join the board, and for us to hold our own meeting as soon as possible. It took place on Monday 3 June 1974 at the publisher's offices. I told them that the journal had acquired a poor reputation in recent years, news that they found to be ‘shocking’, for they had presumed that the academic quality had been maintained. Their chief concern was the high extra costs caused by regular substantial resettings of papers, for example with my second article and only by luck not the first one also; however, they could do nothing effective because the journal had no editor as such.

Clearly Heathcote's ‘party’ needed to take place as soon as possible. At the end of the afternoon Cheney telephoned him to fix a date; but after a brief exchange he ended the call, for it had literally interrupted Heathcote, unaware that I was in their office at the time, typing out his letter of retirement from the journal and proposing me as his successor. The publishers and I had just discussed various forms of action that we might take, but suddenly now I could be the first editor of Annals of Science if I wished—and all because of accidents to do with diplomatic relations, types of history, and places of residence!6 My decision to join the editorial board taken a few days earlier, that could have gone the other way, was producing its unexpected consequences at great speed. I was to discover several years later that, had I rejected that invitation, the company would soon have terminated its gentlemen's agreement to publish the journal; at that time Annals of Science was their only journal that was not purely scientific, and they had no contacts with the academic community in the humanities.

One of my first tasks was to receive the manuscripts that Heathcote had already accepted for publication. So I made my final trip down to Muswell Hill, where he began to explain to me his elaborate system of file cards and login books that he used to administer the journal. I assured him that it would be sufficient for me to receive the manuscripts and any pertinent letters from the authors, and that I would proceed from there. I left him in his office with a bundle under my arm. ‘What do I do now?’, he asked. ‘Nothing at all’, I replied, ‘you have finished’. ‘Ah, I've finished!’, he exclaimed, and a huge smile crossed his face; waving farewell to the bundle under my arm, he said ‘bye bye, bye bye!’.

Notes

¹On this continuing context see T. L. Hankins, ‘In Defence of Biography: The Use of Biography in the History of Science’, History of Science, 17 (1980), 1–16.

²I. Grattan-Guinness, ‘Towards a Biography of Georg Cantor’, Annals of Science, 27 (1971), 345–91 and plates xxv–xxviii.

³I. Grattan-Guinness, ‘A Mathematical Union: William Henry and Grace Chisholm Young’, Annals of Science, 29 (1972), 105–86.

⁴See G. Sarton, Horus (New York, Ronald Press, 1962), 94–246.

⁵On the origins and first decades of the journal, including the reminiscences by Harcourt Brown, see R. E. W. Maddison (comp.), Annals of Science. Index to volumes 1 to 25 (1936–1969) (London, Taylor & Francis, 1970).

⁶For some details of the aftermath see I. Grattan-Guinness, ‘History of Science Journals: “To be Useful, and to the Living”?’, Annals of Science, 34 (1977), 193–202.