History
The journal began as The Analyst in 1874 and was established and edited by Joel E. Hendricks. It was "intended to afford a medium for the presentation and analysis of any and all questions of interest or importance in pure and applied Mathematics, embracing especially all new and interesting discoveries in theoretical and practical astronomy, mechanical philosophy, and engineering". It was published in Des Moines, Iowa, and was the earliest American mathematics journal to be published continuously for more than a year or two. This incarnation of the journal ceased publication after its tenth year, in 1883, giving as an explanation Hendricks' declining health, but Hendricks made arrangements to have it taken over by new management, and it was continued from March 1884 as the Annals of Mathematics. The new incarnation of the journal was edited by Ormond Stone (University of Virginia). It moved to Harvard in 1899 before reaching its current home in Princeton in 1911.
An important period for the journal was 1928–1958 with Solomon Lefschetz as editor. During this time, the annals became an increasingly well-known and respected journal. Its rise, in turn, stimulated American mathematics. Norman Steenrod characterized Lefschetz' impact as editor as follows:"The importance to American mathematicians of a first-class journal is that it sets high standards for them to aim at. In this somewhat indirect manner, Lefschetz profoundly affected the development of mathematics in the United States."
Princeton University continued to publish the annals on its own until 1933, when the Institute for Advanced Study took joint editorial control. Since 1998 it has been available in an electronic edition, alongside its regular print edition. The electronic edition was available without charge, as an open access journal, but since 2008 this is no longer the case. Editions before 2003 were transferred to the non-free JSTOR archive, and articles are not freely available until 5 years after publication.
Read more about this topic: Annals Of Mathematics
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)