History of the Society - The launching of the Journal
of Endocrinology and
the founding of the Society for Endocrinology
Lord Zuckerman OM KCB FRS
Reproduced from Journal of Endocrinology (1984) 100 1-5
The idea of launching a Journal of Endocrinology and, as a follow-up,
to found a Society for Endocrinology, was conceived in a bus going to Croydon
Airport on 9 June 1937. Those concerned were Sir Charles Dodds Bart FRS,
Sir Frank Young FRS, Sir Alan Parkes FRS, and myself. The four of us were
on our way to Paris to attend the Singer-Polignac Colloque (see Plate),
the first international symposium on the physiology of reproduction ever
to be organized, and the proceedings of which were published in 1938, in
a volume edited by Lucien Brouha and entitled Les hormones sexuelles (Paris:
Hermann).
I do not know whether or not we had all seriously thought before the bus-ride
of the desirability of taking the step we ultimately took. But I had. I
well remember the sense of frustration I experienced in those days with
the delays in the publication of papers. We were then in the heyday of
the growth of endocrinology, and of reproductive physiology in particular.
Almost any experiment seemed to produce fascinating results. I had come
firmly to believe that endocrinology deserved to be recognized both by
a British Society and by its own Journal.
The story of the subsequent gestation and birth of the Journal falls
into several distinct phases. On our return from Paris we had to inform
ourselves about what would be entailed in launching a new scientific journal.
I began by seeking the advice of Sir Arthur Tansley FRS, at the time Sherardian
Professor of Botany in the University of Oxford, and who I knew had on
his own launched The New Phytologist in 1902, and which he had
also edited for 30 years 1. He spoke to the syndics of the Oxford University
Press on our behalf, and advised that those responsible for the scientific
conduct of a journal which they wanted to see launched should also be responsible
for its finances; that it would, however, be preferable were the journal
to be in the hands of an established society rather than in those of a
group of individuals; and that the journal should in any event be backed
by a guarantee which would cover the probable deficit that would have to
be met in the launching phase.
The next step was to find guarantors. We thought that ten would be appropriate,
with each undertaking to provide up to £40, if called upon. The four
progenitors of the project were obviously on the list. We then persuaded
Sir Henry Dale FRS, Sir Charles Harington FRS, F. E. Crew FRS, F. H. A.
Marshall FRS, G. F. Marrian FRS and P. M. F. Bishop, all of them, sadly,
now dead, to join our number. I then wrote to the editors of fourteen other
scientific journals to inform them of what we proposed doing, to ask for
their views, and to allay any suspicion of 'poaching'. Eleven blessed our
venture unreservedly. A twelfth, Herbert Woollard FRS, then the Professor
of Anatomy at University College London, and Editor of the Journal
of Anatomy, was not at all happy about our intentions. One sentence
in the letter (20 May 1938) in which he expounded his views makes strange
reading today. "The chief difficulty I see in all this," he wrote, "is
that there are only about six endocrinologists in the country." The
remaining two of the fourteen — the distinguished cardiologist, Sir
Thomas Lewis FRS, who then edited Clinical Science, and E. A.
Carmichael, the Editor of another clinical journal — expressed the
hope that we would not try to attract for publication in the proposed new
journal papers that dealt with clinical matters.
The first phase of our work having been completed, the ten guarantors
formally constituted themselves into a 'Managing Committee of the proposed
journal to be devoted to Endocrinological subjects'.
This Committee met twice, the first occasion on 25 May 1938, when Frank
Young, then at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill,
was appointed Secretary. Publishers' estimates were compared, and it was
agreed that it would be inadvisable to help finance the proposed journal
by means of pharmaceutical advertisements over which we did not have the
power of veto. One difficulty that had to be immediately resolved was a
proposal from the British Medical Association that it should assume responsibility
for the new journal. Some of the committee favoured this idea, since it
would relieve the guarantors of any financial obligations. Others, including
myself, were opposed (undated letter. S. Z. to Frank Young), first because
we were optimistic about the financial future of the journal, and second
because we felt that when the journal became established, it should become
the nucleus round which a society could form. This view was finally accepted
by the whole Management Committee. (The question of handing the Journal over
to the BMA arose again in 1946, shortly after the Society was formed.)
During this time we were also dealing with the legal formalities of incorporating
the guarantors as a non-profit making company, to be called the Journal
of Endocrinology Ltd, limited by guarantee, and having no share capital.
This second phase of our planning took nearly a year, and when it had been
completed, the Management (or launching) Committee was wound up.
The third phase began on 11 March 1939 with a meeting of the Council of
Management of the new Company, followed by its first Annual General Meeting.
Membership of the Company was formally limited to the guarantors, all ten
of whom served on the Council of Management. Alan Parkes was appointed
Chairman of the Company; Frank Young, Secretary; Peter Bishop. Treasurer;
and an Editorial Board was appointed under the chairmanship of Charles
Dodds. After a careful study of the estimates provided by the publishers
whom we had approached, we chose the Oxford University Press, with Dr Marshall
and Professor Crew, who felt that we would get better service from the
Cambridge University Press, dissenting. Events proved them right. Difficulties
soon arose with the O.U.P., which we left for the C.U.P. after the two
first volumes had appeared.
In order to make the proposed new journal known to possible subscribers
and contributors, we arranged for a prospectus to be circulated by British
scientific journals, including the Journal of Physiology. The
typography of this prospectus drew from John Fulton of Yale University,
one of the keenest bibliophiles of the day, the adverse comment that "The
circular announcing the new journal ... appears to have been printed by
a third rate job printer, has not been proof read, the press work is extremely
poor and I cannot imagine a brochure less likely on aesthetic grounds to
attract subscribers". Bad typography or not, our publicity campaign
brought in 250 subscribers, and the first number of the Journal appeared
on 1 July 1939. The manuscripts for the second were sent to the Press shortly
after, but by 12 October, when that number appeared, the Second World War
had broken out.
The likely adverse effects of the war on the Journal were discussed on
18 October 1939 at the second meeting of the Council of Management. We
envisaged an increase in costs and also a decline both in the number of
subscribers and in the amount of material that would be submitted for publication.
Accordingly we resolved to suspend publication on the completion of the
first volume. A month later this decision was rescinded since it appeared
that the flow of material for publication had not diminished significantly.
At the same time we asked a number of organizations for financial help
to tide us over our difficulties. The Royal Society provided £300,
which made it unnecessary for the guarantors to add to the £20 each
of them had already paid in.
The first change in the management of the Journal was the resignation
in March 1941 from the Secretary-ship of Frank Young (who at the time was
also looking after the Biochemical Journal), and my appointment
in his place. (R. L. Noble, who had been appointed Assistant Editor to
Dodds, resigned shortly after the war broke out, his place being taken
by P. C. Williams.)
Apart from this, we got along somewhat better than had been anticipated
at the outbreak of war. By 1944, three volumes had been published, the
first two under the imprint of the O.U.P. and the third under that of the
C.U.P. (The correspondence about the transfer of the Journal to
the C.U.P. shows that we had some difficulty in obtaining a clear statement
of our debt to the O.U.P.) We were then all so immersed in our respective
wartime duties that it was very difficult to arrange meetings of the Council.
There was also a considerable lag in picking up again after the war. The
last number of Volume 4, covering the period 1944 and 1945, appeared in
April 1946, while the final number of Volume 5 appeared in June 1948.
The fourth phase in the Journal's history was marked by the formation
of the Society for Endocrinology, a move that had been in our minds when
the Journal was launched. In spite of my continuing and heavy involvement
in war work 2, I took the initiative towards the end of 1944 and drafted
a note (see Appendix) for a meeting of the Council of Management that we
had managed to convene for December. In it I recommended that we should
organize symposia in connection with the Journal of Endocrinology pointing
out that the objects for which the Company had been established were, first,
to own and publish a journal " ... to advance knowledge concerning
the glands of internal secretion ... " and second, "To promote
in such other ways as the Company may from time to time determine the advancement
of such knowledge." The note continued, optimistically, by saying
that "With the European war drawing to a close, it seems appropriate
to consider what other steps we can take to promote the advancement of
knowledge in endocrinology." After my memorandum had been discussed,
I was asked to prepare a statement about the steps which would have to
be taken to form a Society, and to outline a scheme in detail.
In January 1946, some 6 months after the end of the war, all contributors
to the Journal were invited to meet the Council to discuss the
formation of a Society. On 15 February, thirty of us met together
and resolved to form a 'Society for Endocrinology', and to invite as foundation
members all those who had already published in the Journal. A
working committee prepared a draft constitution, which was adopted at a
meeting held at Guy's Hospital on 26 April 1946. At this meeting, John
Folley FRS was elected Secretary of the Society, Cliff Emmens, Treasurer,
and myself Honorary Editor of the Society's Proceedings.
At the first formal Annual General Meeting on 24 July 1946, Alan
Parkes was elected Chairman. An inaugural address was given by Sir Charles
Harington to the title The Scientific Foundations of Endocrinology.
The next step was to associate the Journal with the Society,
so that subscriptions paid by members of the Society covered the supply
of the Journal at a reduced rate. Another issue that had to be
formally agreed was that the Society's Proceedings should be published
in the Journal. Since nearly all the officers of the new Society
were then also members of the Council of the Company of the Journal this
was arranged without difficulty.
Matters continued in this way until the new Society took over the Journal,
with the disbandment of the original Council of the Company. The formal
opening move was made by John Folley, acting as Secretary of the Society,
in a letter dated 28 April 1947 addressed to me as Secretary of the Company,
and informing me that the Society wished to acquire the Journal.
The transfer proved to be a long and complicated business, with all sorts
of legal niceties having to be settled, and with much correspondence with
members of the Council of the Company on the one hand, and with John Folley
and the lawyers on the other.
The final arrangement for the takeover was called the Parkes' Plan. The
first step was to permit all members of the Society who so wished to become
members of the Company of the Journal of Endocrinology, which
therefore had to be formally enlarged so that this could be done. Second,
it was agreed that the Committee of the Society would become the Council
of Management of the enlarged Company. To facilitate this change, five
of the ten members of the original Company and Council — Crew, Dodds.
Marshall, Marrian and Dale — resigned, with the vacancies so created
being regarded as 'casual' vacancies. These were filled by five members
of the Committee of the Society not hitherto associated with the Journal (John
Folley, Charles Gray, Peter Krohn, Idwal Rowlands and F. Lloyd Warren)
who now became members of the enlarged Company. As part of this arrangement,
the Society reimbursed the original guarantors for the sums they had laid
out.
I had an amusing exchange of letters with Charles Dodds about his attendance
at a meeting of the Society which was called for 2 June 1948 to discuss
the transfer. At the time Dodds was looking forward to being relieved of
the editorship of the Journal, the understanding being that I
should take over the burden. In his letter he wrote that he had left Paris
that morning to attend the meeting which he thought had been called for
3.00 p.m. and that when he arrived in good time he learnt that the start
had been advanced to 2.15. "My annoyance", wrote Sir Charles, "is
only tempered by the pleasure that it gives me to contemplate the horrors
that await you as Editor!" The record shows that Dodds had agreed
in writing to the change in the time of the meeting, and had also sent
apologies for being unable to attend!
For 15 years after Dodds and P. C. Williams handed over, the Journal had
its home in the Department of Anatomy in Birmingham. I remained Editor
until March 1957 (for the final year as Chairman of an Editorial Board),
and was followed by Peter Eckstein, who served until May 1963, when the
burden of editing was taken over by H. Helier of Bristol, helped by a much
enlarged Editorial Board. When I became Editor, I had resigned the secretaryship
of the enlarged Company of the Journal of Endocrinology, with
John Folley taking my place.
Meanwhile several changes had taken place in the membership of the Council
of the enlarged Company. By the beginning of 1949, the only two members
of the original ten who were still members of both the Society's Committee
and the Company's Council were Parkes and myself. It had taken almost 10
years to the day for the Journal to spawn a Society with identical aims
and management.
All scientific journals were in difficulties in the immediate post-war
years, for one reason because there was very little to publish, and for
another because of printing problems. In those days it often took as long
as 2 years to get a paper into print, by which time the findings which
it reported had been superseded. It took 3 years to publish the first post-war
volume of the Journal. Delays in the time it took to publish in
turn often resulted in a fall in circulation. The situation was indeed
so bad that some British scientific societies started to seek printers
abroad. In 1949 the Council of the Royal Society had accordingly set up
a small committee consisting of three Fellows, with myself as Chairman,
three representatives of the British Federation of Master Printers, and
three from the Printing and Kindred Trades Association, in order to see
what could be done to improve the situation. As Chairman I was in a good
position to learn what possible remedies lay in the hands of editorial
staffs. One obvious measure was to reduce the delay between the appearance
of the separate parts of a volume by publishing more of them and, so as
to prevent them from becoming too slender, to canvass colleagues to send
in good papers.
In 1953 I accordingly started to campaign for an increase in the rate
of publication of our Journal on the assumption that the more frequently
we published, the more attractive we would become to potential authors,
the more copies we would sell, and the sooner we would be relieved of what
was then continuing financial embarrassment. Council agreed in August 1953
that six parts should appear a year, and 5 months later added two more,
that is to say, it was agreed that we would publish two volumes annually.
That was the start of the upturn in the Society's finances.
In 1953, the Society also agreed to publish, in addition to its Journal,
a series of Memoirs, as records of the Society's conferences and
seminars. This, too, proved a happy venture, both scientifically and financially.
Thirteen volumes of Memoirs appeared in the first 10 years after
this decision was taken.
The numbers of scientists engaged in endocrinological research and in
research in the field of reproductive physiology were multiplying fast,
and in 1956. Alan Parkes proposed, on behalf of the Society for the Study
of Fertility (which had grown up in parallel with the Society for Endocrinology),
that the Journal of Endocrinology should become the official organ
of the Fertility Society and that its name should be changed to that of Journal
of Endocrinology and Reproduction. Views on this proposal were so
divided that it was dropped, and the Society for the Study of Fertility
then launched its own journal.
I forget the lines of the discussion that led to the separation, but since
the hormonal control of reproductive processes had been a powerful interest
among those who, 20 years before, had launched the Journal of Endocrinology.
I certainly regretted that it had come about. But I would not take it upon
myself now to judge whether, from the point of view of the advancement
of endocrinological science, the outcome was good or bad. The fact is that
as science grows it inevitably fragments. Endocrinology was in its infancy
when our journal was founded, and with the growth of the science, specialisms
were bound to develop. It is a truism that in all sciences, major new ideas
which transform the direction of research are not only rare but also very
powerful in setting fashions which, as they are pursued, throw the less
active and less glamorous parts of a subject into the shade. Fortunately
the latter nonetheless remain a potential mine of major ideas for the future.
In my view, that is why a general journal, like the Journal of Endocrinology,
which caters for the conventional as well as the new, can go on looking
forward to as bright a future as its founders hoped for nearly 50 years
ago.
(I prepared a first draft of this brief history in 1964, in the hope that
it would be embellished by Alan Parkes, to whom I wrote saying that I was "practically
certain" that he was "the only other member of the founders who
has any of the earlier correspondence". Unfortunately it appears that
he had none for, apart from suggesting the deletion of passages which dealt
with my own concerns, he made only some textual changes to the draft I
sent him. Believing that much more could and should be added, I then pushed
the manuscript to one side. Twenty years later, I myself can add nothing
to what I first wrote.
In preparing the original draft, I was greatly helped by Miss Pamela Warwick
(now Mrs Spikes), then my secretary, who sifted what was at the time a
much larger volume of relevant paper than is now in my possession. My text
was also then read by two colleagues. Peter Krohn FRS and Peter Eckstein,
to both of whom I offer my belated thanks, as I do to Alan Parkes for his
most useful advice.)
FOOTNOTES
1 More than one learned journal had been founded in those days by a single
individual, and had become their personal property. The Journal of
Physiology, for instance, had been launched in 1878 by Michael Foster
who, in turn, sold it to John Newport Langley in 1894, from whose widow
it was bought by the Physiological Society in 1926.
2 At the time I was scientific adviser on air planning to Lord Tedder.
Deputy Supreme Allied Commander to General Eisenhower, to whose headquarters
in France and my staff were assigned. I was, however, able from time to
time to fly back to the U.K.
APPENDIX
Note by Secretary on calling of symposia in connection with The Journal
of Endocrinology
1. In our Memorandum of Association, the objects for which the Journal
of Endocrinology Limited was established are stated as:
(i) To own and publish a journal devoted to the publication of communications
which advance or are likely to advance knowledge concerning the glands
of internal secretion, the mode of their action, the nature of their secretions
and the disorders of their functions.
(ii) To promote in such other ways as the Company may from time to time
determine the advancement of such knowledge.
2. Until now our activities have necessarily been confined to the task
of fostering the Journal. With the European war drawing to a close, it
seems appropriate to consider what other steps we can take to promote the
advancement of knowledge in endocrinology. The project of forming a Society
of Endocrinology was raised a few years ago during informal discussions
between members of the Council, but was dismissed. It is not felt that
circumstances have yet changed sufficiently to warrant the re-opening of
this discussion.
3. On the other hand, it is suggested that a fruitful way of furthering
knowledge would be for small groups of investigators to hold symposia on
selected topics. The 1937 Singer-Polignac conference in Paris could be
taken as a general example of such a symposium. Experience during the war
has also been that discussions of specific questions by workers interested
in the same problems can be of great value; they serve the useful purpose
of crystallizing the existing state of knowledge, and of defining the more
salient interests which are emerging
4. It is therefore proposed that, as soon as circumstances permit, the
Council should organize symposia on specific topics in the field of endocrinology.
Invitations should be sent by the Council to not more than 20 workers engaged
in research in the particular field selected for discussion. It is useful
to restrict the number at a symposium so as to maintain an "across-the-table" atmosphere,
and so as to prevent the symposium breaking down into non-integrated discussions.
Depending on the subject, the symposium could occupy two, or even four,
sessions.
5. Meetings should at first be called not less than four times a year,
and then as conditions improve, more frequently.
6. The proceedings of each symposium should be summarized briefly in "minutes" indicating
the present state of knowledge in the subject under discussion, and the
more outstanding problems which are under investigation, or which require
investigation. These minutes should be mimeographed and circulated to all
subscribers to the Journal. They should not be more than about 6 pages
long. Assuming a subscribers' list of 500, the cost per set of minutes
would be approximately:
| |
£. |
s. |
d. |
| Postage |
2 |
2 |
0 |
| Stationery |
4 |
15 |
0 |
| Duplicating materials |
|
13 |
0 |
| |
£7 |
10 |
0 |
The Journal itself could not meet these costs, and subscribers should
be invited to increase their subscriptions by the necessary 1s. 3d. a year
(assuming four sets of minutes a year)