And many happy renewals

And many happy renewals

Scientific American through the years

Originally published 6 June 1988

In Novem­ber 1959 I received in the mail my first issue of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. I was a grad­u­ate stu­dent in physics at the time and my new spouse had giv­en me a sub­scrip­tion to the mag­a­zine for my birthday.

The sub­scrip­tion approach­es its 30th anniver­sary [in 1989]. Dur­ing the inter­ven­ing years, geol­o­gy was rev­o­lu­tion­ized by the the­o­ry of plate tec­ton­ics, the “big bang” the­o­ry for the ori­gin of the uni­verse was sub­stan­tial­ly ver­i­fied, spec­tac­u­lar progress was made in under­stand­ing the mol­e­c­u­lar basis of life, com­put­ers per­me­at­ed every aspect of sci­ence and soci­ety, humans left foot­prints (and tire tracks) on the moon and sent probes to the out­er reach­es of the solar sys­tem — to men­tion just a few things that tran­spired in sci­ence. Through­out it all, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can kept me (and thou­sands like me, both sci­en­tists and non-sci­en­tists) author­i­ta­tive­ly informed.

The mag­a­zine is more than a com­mer­cial ven­ture, it is an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion. Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can arti­cles have prob­a­bly been more fre­quent­ly assigned as required read­ings for high school and col­lege stu­dents than mate­ri­als from any oth­er source. The bib­li­ogra­phies of many sci­ence text­books are lit­tle more than lists of arti­cles from the mag­a­zine. Pack­ages of reprints have served as the text for many col­lege cours­es. Bound col­lec­tions of arti­cles have a promi­nent place on the reserved read­ing shelves of school libraries. And final­ly, the mag­a­zine may be the sin­gle most impor­tant vehi­cle for keep­ing sci­en­tists informed about devel­op­ments in fields sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent than their own.

The extra­or­di­nary con­tri­bu­tion of this par­tic­u­lar mag­a­zine to sci­ence edu­ca­tion is sel­dom acknowl­edged. I am one read­er and edu­ca­tor who would like to say “Thanks.”

A long history

There has been a Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can for 143 years, but for most of its his­to­ry the mag­a­zine con­cerned itself with the horse-sense appli­ca­tion of sci­ence to indus­try. Perus­ing ear­ly issues of the mag­a­zine is like thumb­ing through cat­a­logs of inven­tions. The cur­rent jour­nal got its start in 1948, when Ger­ard Piel and his asso­ciates pur­chased “the name, good-will, and cir­cu­la­tion” of the old mag­a­zine, and changed its focus from prac­ti­cal tech­nol­o­gy to science.

In its cur­rent for­mat, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can is cel­e­brat­ing its 40th anniver­sary. The orig­i­nal prospec­tus promised that the new mag­a­zine would fill a gap between two kinds of sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion — the tech­ni­cal jour­nal in which the spe­cial­ist reports his work to oth­er spe­cial­ists in the same field, and the pop­u­lar mag­a­zine of sci­ence pub­lished for mass audi­ences. The new Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can tar­get­ed its audi­ence in the gap between the two extremes, “the grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of US cit­i­zens who share a respon­si­ble inter­est in the advance and appli­ca­tion of science.”

It is to the cred­it to the orig­i­nal edi­tor and pub­lish­er, Ger­ard Piel, that he saw a gap and filled it. Admirably. After four decades, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can has this par­tic­u­lar niche in sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion vir­tu­al­ly to itself. The mag­a­zine offers sci­en­tists a way to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­er sci­en­tists in dif­fer­ent fields, and with that part of the gen­er­al pub­lic who want to push their curios­i­ty and knowl­edge beyond what can be found in the pop­u­lar press.

The author­i­ta­tive­ness of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can stems from the fact that the arti­cles are writ­ten by the experts who did the work. Sci­en­tif­ic spe­cial­ists are not usu­al­ly not­ed for the lucid­i­ty of their prose, so it is some­thing of a mir­a­cle that the mag­a­zine works at all. It works, it seems to me, for two rea­sons. First, the edi­tors skill­ful­ly insure that the words that reach the pages of the mag­a­zine are plain Eng­lish. And sec­ond, the mag­a­zine’s graph­ics are sim­ply the best there are.

Informative images

I think it is fair to say that Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can has rede­fined the nature of sci­en­tif­ic illus­tra­tion. The style is both dig­ni­fied and beau­ti­ful. No mat­ter how abstruse the sub­ject — par­ti­cles physics, pro­tein struc­ture, the stress analy­sis of Goth­ic cathe­drals — the graph­ics take you right to the sci­en­tif­ic heart of the subject.

My first issue of Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, back in 1959, con­tained arti­cles on high-ener­gy cos­mic rays and the lan­guage of crows. The June 1988 issue has arti­cles on bac­te­ria as mul­ti­cel­lu­lar organ­isms and ear­ly iron smelt­ing in Cen­tral Africa. Mul­ti­ply that diver­si­ty of sub­ject mat­ter by 2,780 (near­ly 30 years of arti­cles) and the mag­a­zine has cov­ered a lot of ground since I’ve been a sub­scriber. I can truth­ful­ly say that I have learned more gen­er­al sci­ence from Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can than from any oth­er source.

Which is why a shiv­er of wor­ry went up my spine a year or two ago when I read that the mag­a­zine had been pur­chased by a Ger­man pub­lish­ing group, amid reports of takeover bat­tles and finan­cial dis­tress. Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can is a resource that sci­ence edu­ca­tion can ill afford to lose. Was this the begin­ning of the end?

From the looks of it, the answer is no. Edi­tor Jonathan Piel, Ger­ard’s son, remains in charge. There have been recent changes in for­mat that make the mag­a­zine spright­lier, newsi­er, and eas­i­er to read. To my mind the changes are all to the good.

But it would be a shame to tin­ker too much with a for­mu­la that has served sci­ence edu­ca­tion for so long with such effec­tive­ness. If we are lucky, we’ll have forty more years of the same old-faith­ful mag­a­zine. Hap­py anniver­sary, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, and many hap­py returns.


Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can cel­e­brates its 175th birth­day in 2020. ‑Ed.

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