Interscience
| Interscience | |
|---|---|
| legal form | |
| founding | 1940 |
| Seat | New York City |
| Branch | publishing company |
Interscience was an American science publisher that was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in 1961 (after which it was an imprint by Wiley).
history
Interscience was founded in New York in 1940 by European emigrants: the Jewish chemist Eric Proskauer (Erich Simon Proskauer 1903–1991), who had previously worked for the Academic Publishing Society in Leipzig, and the Dutch bookseller Maurits Dekker . Proskauer was more of the introverted scholar, Dekker the extroverted businessman.
Some chemists and other scientists of European origin (such as Piet Kolthoff and the physiologist Maurice B. Visscher (1901–1983), both originally Dutch and professors at the University of Minnesota, the chemist and vitamin researcher Hans Reinhard Rosenberg (1912 –1979), all also authors of the publisher) and an initial success was the publication of the High Polymers series by Herman Mark . In 1941 the journal Advances in Enzymology was founded at Interscience, which was soon followed by other journals in chemistry and medicine.
During the war they were able to publish German scientific books and authors whose copyrights had been expropriated at low prices, made possible by photocopy offset printing which the Edwards Brothers printing company in Ann Arbor was able to provide. These included the methods of mathematical physics by Richard Courant and David Hilbert and the lectures on functional theory by Adolf Hurwitz and the organic preparations by Conrad Weygand .
They got competition from other emigrants, including Walter Jolowicz (in the USA Walter Johnson), the son of the founder of the Academic Publishing Company Leo Jolowicz († 1941 imprisoned), and his brother-in-law Kurt Jacoby . Jacoby negotiated with the Interscience founders about joining the publishing house, but then founded Johnson Academic Press with his brother-in-law .
After the war, the chemist Arnold Weissberger (1898–1984), who was employed by Eastman Kodak and had been trained in Germany, took over the publication of chemical journals at Interscience. In 1945, in collaboration with Herman F. Mark, the Polymer Bulletin appeared , which in 1946 became the Journal of Polymer Science . They thought the Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry of Fritz Ullmann publish in English edition, after consulting with his boss at Brooklyn Polytechnic Raymond Eller Kirk recommended Mark but in 1944 its own encyclopedia under US publication to start. It was published from 1947 to 1956 (co-editor was Donald F. Othmer ). The Encyclopedia of Polymer Science and Technology followed from 1964 to 1971.
In mathematics, there was a collaboration with Richard Courant and his Courant Institute . An English translation of the Courant-Hilbert textbook appeared (1953, 1962) - after the copyright expropriation had been exploited for the German edition, although Courant was also an emigrant - and the journal Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics and the monograph series Monographs in Pure and Applied Mathematics (with the first volume Supersonic flows and shock waves by Courant and Kurt Friedrichs ).
They entered into collaborations for US sales for North Holland and Elsevier and worked with Oliver & Boyd in Edinburgh and Blackie & Sons in Glasgow on mathematical works.
The takeover brought the experience of the Interscience founders to scientific publications in the European tradition at Wiley.
literature
- Richard Abel, William Gordon Graham (Eds.): Immigrant Publishers. The impact of expatriate publishers in Britain and America in the 20th century, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick 2009