In the 1930s German was still considered the primary language of international
scientific communications — because German scientists held the leading
position in many disciplines, including chemistry, mathematics and physics.
German was also the language of scientific publication in Vienna, then the
reputed center of medicine, psychology and psychiatry, as well as in
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Scandinavia and the Netherlands. Even in
English-speaking countries such as the U.K. and the U.S., scientists were
expected to read German to keep up with developments in their fields.
However, after the National Socialist Party came to power in 1933, Germany
lost many of its greatest scientists in the exodus from Hitler’s anti-Semitic
and anti-intellectual regime. As Hitler’s repressive regime gained strength
the Netherlands increasingly provided a haven for scientists and intellectuals
fleeing Nazi Germany. The closer war loomed, the more scientists flooded into
Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, either looking for refuge or passage to
freedom in the U.S., making the Netherlands a new locus of scientific thought
and publication.
Growing Demands
Sensing that the exodus of all these scientists would reshape the intellectual
landscape Elsevier anticipated a change in the scientific community and a
corresponding need for English-language scientific texts, a prediction that
would prove the making of the company. Although the language of science
remained German, Elsevier predicted that there would be a growing demand for
those texts to be translated into English, for both political and practical
reasons. Although the U.K. and the U.S. already published their own scientific
findings in English, that work was done by the scientific societies, smaller
scale publishers who favored local authors and printers. Nobody was publishing
the work of European scientists in English. Elsevier saw an opportunity to
fill that gap. One of the first textbooks they published, in 1937, was chemist
Paul Karrer’s Organic Chemistry, an English translation of the highly
successful textbook Lehrbuch der Organischen Chemie. Later that year Karrer
was awarded the Nobel Prize for his investigations on carotenoids, flavins and
vitamins A and B2. Thus even though the company’s first science-publishing
endeavor was not a commercial success, it did establish Elsevier’s reputation
as a specialist publisher of English-language science texts.
As the new business grew, the company eagerly made plans to publish another
English-text science publication — the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Organic
Chemistry — that would bring together the work of various international
scientists. The company also began to expand internationally, establishing a
U.K. office in 1939, and planning to follow that with the establishment of a
U.S. subsidiary. These efforts were not to come to fruition for another 20
years.
The War Years
All plans were brought to a sudden halt on May 10, 1940, when the Nazis
crossed the Dutch border. Activities in the Netherlands came to a standstill
during the war. Although Elsevier continued to make preparations for future
publications, the company was not allowed to publish the works of any authors
who were not registered with the "Kultuur Kamer," severely limiting the scope
of academic publishing in the Netherlands. Worse still, those German refugees
who had played such a major role in the development of Dutch international
publishing were suddenly in danger. Some went into hiding and escaped death,
or fled to the U.S. Two Elsevier employees, Dr. Maurits Dekker and Dr. Eric
Proskauer made their way to the US. Although, as a result of legal issues,
they never established the Elsevier subsidiary that had been planned, they did
found Interscience, a successful company that would later partner with
Elsevier to co-produce journals. Others were not as fortunate as Dekker and
Proskauer, and many scientists and editors were either deported from the
Netherlands or killed during the war years.
Science Journals
After the war German universities and German scientific research were slow to
recover and the "brain drain" continued as significant numbers of West German
scientists left for the U.S. and other western countries. The intellectual
landscape had changed, with its center of gravity shifting from Germany to the
mid-Atlantic. Elsevier, already an international publisher, was
well-positioned to continue serving the expanding international market. Not
only was it culturally prepared for the changing landscape of the scientific
community, it was physically well-placed between the European continent and
the English-speaking countries. The Netherlands then, with its history of
scientific publishing, its ideal geographic position and its reputation for
multilingual fluency, was the perfect base for the new world of international
science publishing. Grabbing the moment, Elsevier set forth to become an
innovative international science publishing company.
Elsevier
began by rapidly building a strong book program. When that proved successful,
the company ventured into new territory, the world of international science
journals. In 1947, Elsevier introduced the first international journal in the
field of biochemistry and biophysics — Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA).
The journal was published in cooperation with Elsevier’s old friends at
Interscience and was run by a neutral board of international editors. Even
though it was not to turn a profit until 1951 (and even then the profit was
modest) Biochimica et Biophysica Acta was a truly cooperative and
international enterprise, one that set the model for all future Elsevier
journals. BBA was also visionary — understanding from its inception that
genetic research would ultimately become the issue of the century for
biochemists. Indeed BBA has continued to herald advances in genetic research.
As a result of more than 50 years of publishing groundbreaking work BBA is
today not only the oldest, but indubitably among the most esteemed, of all
Elsevier titles. Indeed BBA continues to rank among the top 20 most cited of
all science journals.
Opposition
However, back in 1947 if those involved in putting out the innovative new
international journal expected accolades and congratulations, then they must
have been sorely disappointed. For in fact the international journal model, as
represented by Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, encountered fierce opposition.
Some scientists argued that the growing subdivision of science into smaller
specialties (instead of adhering to the old linguistic and geographical
boundaries) would weaken science by reducing the range of individual
scientists’ knowledge. The editors of various European national journals
complained that the growth of international publishing would lead to a
shortage of publishable manuscripts for local journals. In the early days this
opposition was fierce enough and powerful enough to thwart some international
science publishing endeavors. Indeed in the 1950s another Dutch international
science publisher, North Holland (a company whose destiny was to become
intertwined with Elsevier’s) failed in its attempts to establish a European
journal of nuclear physics because of such resistance.
In
spite of this opposition however, slowly but surely over the course of the
1950s, both Elsevier and North Holland began to develop an impressive
collection of science journals including: Analytica Chimica Acta (Elsevier
1947), Clinica Chimica Acta (Elsevier 1956), Wear (Elsevier 1957),
Chromatography (Elsevier 1958), Physics Letters (North Holland 1967) and
Nuclear Physics (North Holland 1956), the journal that published Gerardus ‘t
Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman’s Nobel Prize-winning papers on particle
physics theory. By the 1960s then, the business of international science
publishing was taking off and the Dutch were leading the way. Having developed
a significant list of reputable international peer-review journals, Elsevier
set out to expand internationally, opening a branch of the company in the U.K.
in 1961, followed by the creation of a marketing, distribution and publishing
center in New York in 1962. Elsevier was finally on its way to creating the
global scientific publishing company originally envisaged back in the 1930s,
before Hitler destroyed so much of the intellectual fabric of European society.
