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In 2003, the world celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the elucidation of the structure of DNA and, thus, the birth of molecular biology. As this period is now a part of human history, original documents from the founders of molecular biology are becoming increasingly important to scholars, and are being harshly fought over by public libraries and private collectors. Private correspondence, laboratory notebooks, draft manuscripts, meeting and travel notes, and photographs all make up the primary documentation that allows historians to understand how theories and discoveries developed, while revealing details of the complex personalities behind the achievements and their roles in biological research. Arguments over such documents raise the question of whether this part of the common cultural heritage, and, more generally, any historical scientific treasure, should be retained in its country of origin and made accessible to the public, while restricting private ownership. > …original documents from the founders of molecular biology are becoming increasingly important to scholars, and are being harshly fought over by public libraries and private collectors Many of these questions were triggered by the controversy surrounding the so‐called Norman Collection, a huge archive of papers from the main protagonists of the ‘classic period’ of molecular biology, including Aaron Klug, Max Perutz, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, James Watson, Rollin Hotchkiss, Sven Furberg, Sydney Brenner, Max Delbruck and Maurice Wilkins. Rare‐book dealer Jeremy Norman in California put together this scientific trove with the help of Al Seckel, a neuroscientist working at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, USA, who personally contacted scientists in order to buy their professional archives. In a few years, and with some US$1.5 million, Seckel and Norman amassed an immense amount of material, including rarities such as Wilkin's personal copy of Watson's controversial draft book Honest Jim , later published in a revised …

VLADIMIR KOMAROV, president of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday on October 14. It also marked the fiftieth anniversary of his scientific work. Komarov holds many posts; thus in addition to being president of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., he is chairman of the Council for Studying the Production Potentialities of the U.S.S.R., chairman of the All-Union Botanical Society and the All-Russian Society for the Conservation of National Resources, head of the Department of Geography in the Botanical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, and head of the Botanical Department of the University of Leningrad. In addition, he is editor, of leading Soviet periodicals on biology and author of more than two hundred published works, including a number of monographs, text-books and papers of botanical interest. Komarov has taken part in, organized and directed nine large research expeditions in Central Asia, the Far East and Kamchatka, and has become the leading authority on the flora of Asia and particularly of the Far East. More than sixty plant species have been named after him.

In this current year the distinguished Russian entomologist, A. Scmenov Tian-Shansky, observes his seventieth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of his scientific work. He was born on June 21st (9), 1866, in St. Petersburg. His father, Peter P. Semenov, was a statesman, a geographer, an art connoisseur, and a scientist of wide erudition. He took an active part in governmental affairs, was one of the participants of the Commission which was responsible for the preparation of the legal act liberating the serfs in 1861, and became in the course of his political career a senator and a member of the Council of the Empire. In recognition of his geographical explorations in the mountains of Central Asia the name of Tian-Shansky was added to his family name by imperial decree. His son, Andrew Semenov Tian-Shansky, inherited a keen love for nature and an acute scientific mind from his illustrious father. When he was still a student at the University of St. Petersburg he was awarded the silver medal of the Imperial Geographical Society for his studies of entomological material collected during the expeditions of Przewalsky and Potanin. Since his early years A. Semenov Tian-Shansky has been particularly interested in Coleoptera. He collected beetles in various parts of European and Asiatic Russia conducting some of the explorations jointly with his friend and fellow entomologist, Alexander Jakovlev. Together with his father he made a profitable journey to Turkestan in the region of Samarkand and adjacent mountains. The Caucasus Crimea and a number of localities along the Volga were explored by Semenov not only from the point of view of coleopterology but also from broader faunistic aspects. In fact observations in ornithology carried out by Semenov for a number of years contributed considerably to the knowledge of the Russian avifauna. Throughout the fifty years of his scientific activity Semenov made a thorough research of the faunistic characteristics of Central Asia based on the coleopterological material secured by the expeditions of a number of Russian explorers: Przewalsky, Potanin, Grum-Grzhimailo, Grombczevsky, Pevtzov, Roborvsky, Kozlov, Berezovsky, Komarov, Putjata, Novicky, Avinoff, A. Jacobson, Kiritshenko, Zarudny and others.

Jubilees induce one to reflect, to look back. It is a good opportunity to make some summaries, one ponders over the achievements of the past. It is also a good moment to express one's appreciation and gratitude. Such an expression of appreciation and a form of gratitude is the book Philosophy Leaning Towards Man, dedicated to Rev. Stanisław Kowalczyk, a professor of philosophy on the occasion of forty years of his scientific work at the Catholic University of Lublin and the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination. This joint publication, dedicated to Prof. Kowalczyk and edited by Edward Balawajder, Arkadiusz Jabłoński and Jan Szymczyk, comprises numerous studies by his associates, colleagues and students. The whole work is thematically organized into three parts. The first part contains texts that raise anthropological issues, the second - social issues, and the third - issues concentrated around the relation between God and religion. This organization perfectly reflects the spectrum of the interests of Prof. Kowalczyk.

2005 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Albert Einstein and the centennial of the publication of five of his major scientific papers that transformed the study of physics. Einstein's insights were so revolutionary that they challenged not only established doctrine in the natural sciences, but even altered the way ordinary people saw their world. By the 1920s he had achieved international popular renown on a scale that would not become usual until the rise of the contemporary celebrity saturated tabloids and cable news channels. His recondite scientific papers as well as interviews with the popular press were front page news and fodder for the newsreels. Usually absent, however, was any sober discussion of his participation in the political life of his times as an outspoken radical-especially in profiles and biographies after his death.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

It is befitting that this issue commemorate a half century anniversary of the American Board of Otolaryngology. Dr. Tom Carmody, Denver, President of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology in 1923 stated, “examination in otolaryngology with certification must be established as in ophthalmology, and as this Society is the pioneer in requiring examination, we must lead the way.” He referred to the great success of the meeting of our sister organization, the American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society, Inc., (The Triological Society), with scientific papers.

The two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the USSR Academy of Sciences is a great celebration for Soviet science and all its branches, and at the same time it is an occasion for summing up the accomplishments and defining the prospects for future development. The formation of economic science in the system of the Academy dates back solely to the Soviet period. The tasks of the Academy of Sciences were defined by V. I. Lenin in the very first months after the October Revolution in the Draft Plan of Scientific and Technical Work [Nabrosok plana nauchno-tekhnicheskikh rabot]. Since the late 1920s scholars of economics have been elected to the Academy.

Jose Manuel Rodriguez Delgado

“Chcę wrócić, jak emigrant, z podróży dalekiej, / Z papieru, z martwych liter, żywy. Do twych rąk . . . ” : życie i twórczość Kazimierza Wierzyńskiego (1894–1969)

IT is with a certain amount of diffidence that we g-ive here a number of cordial messages which have reached us upon the attainment of the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of NATURE. We believe, however, that many readers will be interested not only in the friendly greetings expressed in these messages, but also in the references to the work of science, and its expanding field of usefulness. To the official representatives of scientific societies and university institutions, and to the other men of light and leading who have honoured us with their congratulations, we offer our sincerest thanks. Such appreciation of past efforts affords the strongest stimulus to future endeavour.

The purpose of this article is to reconstruct a number of scientific publishing projects of Odessa historians of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, which were never fully completed. The problem was not considered comprehensively in historiography, although several publications mention certain aspects. We have used a wide base of sources, primarily narrative, that is, the available texts of historians. Auxiliary were for us act, epistolary, newspaper sources. Some of these sources are archived. One of the first joint publishing projects of two Odesa scientists known to us falls on the initial period of the existence of Novorossiysk University. Professors of the department of canon law O. S. Pavlov and the history of Russian law F. I. Leontovych worked on the preparation of a collection of the most important monuments of Old Russian law. But the project was not implemented due to the move of O.S. Pavlov to Moscow. For a long time, Professor of the Department of Russian History I. A. Lynnychenko cherished plans to publish documentary sources of the medieval history of Western Ukraine. The project of the professor of the Department of History of Russian Law A. Ya. Shpakov “History of the secularization of church property in Novgorod under Ivan III” remained in its infancy. At the best stage of readiness was the project of publishing an illustrated atlas on the history of medieval and Byzantine art by the professor of the Department of Theory and History of Arts of the Faculty of History and Philology. O.A. Pavlovsky. The deepening of the process of institutionalization of historical research caused collective projects that contributed to the identification of scientific schools, consolidation of the traditions of Odesa historiography. In 1911–1914, a group of professors worked on the publication of a large collection of scientific papers in honor of the anniversary of F. I. Uspensky. The collection was to be published as the twenty-first volume of the periodical of the Historical and Philological Society at Novorossiysk University. In the early 1910s, the professors worked on a project to publish a large work on the history of Novorossiysk University for the fiftieth anniversary of the institution. In fact, the publishing archive of this project is a part of O. P. Dobroklonsky, which is stored at number 157 in the State Archives of the Odessa region. Here are presented valuable autobiographies and biographies of a number of professors, statistical summaries. However, all these cases indicate that the project hardly managed to move further than the preparatory stage. War, revolution prevented. There have been cases when the creative heritage of deceased historians, thanks to their relatives and colleagues, became the property of descendants. This is how the works of P. K. Bruna, P. O. Yurchenko, S. I. Ilovaisky. So, the reason for the failure to implement a number of creative publishing projects of Odessa historians in the late XIX – early XX century was in different planes. Sometimes this reflected the peculiarities of the life rhythm of historians, a decrease in the pace of their intellectual work, primarily due to pedagogical workload, health problems. It was often said about the material reasons that haunted historians at all stages of history up to the present day. A specific circumstance was the limitations of the then historians regarding the mechanisms of remote labor, their mental unpreparedness for the implementation of joint projects at a distance from each other. In general, firstly, the history of unrealized publishing projects almost always reflects the features of the common heritage of scientists; secondly, it allows one to dive deeper into the features of the intellectual mechanism; thirdly, it demonstrates the interconnection of social, political, economic, scientific, psycho-emotional factors; and fourthly , shows the advantages and disadvantages of collective projects, fifthly, expands our understanding of bibliometric indicators at the prosopographic and personal levels. Revealing of manuscripts, archaeographic publication of the most relevant of them is a promising direction for further historiographic, bibliological and bibliographic research.

Editorial - Human Experimentation

Sir Walter Morley Fletcher died on June 7, 1933, with unlooked for suddenness when he was just approaching his sixtieth birthday, but when his physique and brain were still those of a man in the most vigorous prime. Years of fruitful work had seemed to lie ahead of him, for he embodied the strength of a family of tenacious vitality. His father and mother had each lived beyond the ninetieth year, and all their ten children were alive when they celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding day. Walter Fletcher was their youngest and sixth son, being born in 1873. His parents on both sides were from Yorkshire, and of that independent spirit which showed itself in Nonconformity to the Church. They were Congregationalists, and in each of them religion was blended with a sensitiveness to art and culture that made goodness and beauty seem to them almost the same. Walter Fletcher never lost these spiritual impressions that he received in his early years at home. His praise of clean scientific work rose to its highest appreciation when he spoke deliberately of its beauty, and characteristically in public addresses he was wont to choose a phrase from the Bible or related sources when he wished to express emotions that had been stirring deeply within him.

THE fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Oxford University Museum was celebrated on Thursday last, and a large number of distinguished men of science, representing the universities and scientific societies and institutions of Great Britain and Ireland, assembled to do honour to the occasion. The proceedings were short, and may be very shortly described. The guests assembled in the Sheldonian Theatre, where the honorary degree of Doctor of Science was conferred on Prof. Svante Arrhenius and Mr. A. G. Vernon Harcourt. Fifty years ago Mr. Harcourt was acting as Brodie's lecture assistant, and was engaged in setting up the apparatus for the first lectures delivered in the new museum. Hearty congratulations were tendered by those present on his unimpaired vigour and energy after so many years' active and distinguished scientific work. After receiving congratulatory addresses from universities and learned societies, the Vice-Chancellor read a letter from the Chancellor, and delivered an address which was singularly felicitous both from its style and from the evident sincerity with which he expressed his sympathy with the progress of scientific studies in the University of Oxford.

We are excited to announce the upcoming release of our new book called Reconsidering the Limits to Growth. A Report to the Russian Association of the Club of Rome. This report is the result of more than ten years of work on modeling and forecasting world dynamics and it reflects the views of Russian scientists on the future of global development. In some respect our report can be regarded as preliminary research attempting to understand how we can expand the limits in the future. In doing so, these limits should be viewed in a broad historical context (and not just as a continuation of 20th century trends). The title of our report, ‘Reconsidering the Limits’, certainly echoes the famous ‘The Limits to Growth’ (by Donella and Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William Behrens III). This is no coincidence, as 2022 marked the fiftieth anniversary of this report, which is one of the landmark scientific works that gave impetus to understanding the changed trends and played a prominent role in understanding the path of humanity towards the future. However, in our report, the concept of limits is understood more broadly and covers not only the process of overcoming the limits that hinder development, but also implies situations when such limits become irrelevant. So in our response to the Club of Rome we choose to look at the interactions among aging, capitalism, inequality, climate change, resources, technology, and world order. This list does not exhaust all of the future topics that might be examined but it certainly represents an ambitious undertaking of a group of Russian analysts working in Moscow.