This was and still is an invaluable resource to the
Rotational Spectroscopy community. It was priceless in the
pre-Internet era as it disseminated informal information on who was
working on what. This allowed unnecessary duplication of work to
be avoided, and it also gave a chance for pooling of research effort and was
generally stimulating to those who read it (but in many participating
labs only the senior members may have been aware of the existence of this
publication).
The Newsletter was
originated in 1960 by E.Bright Wilson of Harvard University and
consisted of an ever growing number of pages. The pages were
compilations of information on projects provided by the participating
laboratories, to which the Newsletter was sent in return. An
important part of the Newsletter was a formula index (at the end), and
later also a list of laboratories (at the beginning). There were
initially two issues of the Newsletter per year but from issue 9 it
became a yearly effort, published in the second quarter of the year.
Perusal of the
earlier editions of the Newsletter provides a fascinating glimpse at the
evolution of the field of Rotational Spectroscopy and also at
the careers of the participating scientists. The Newsletter has
been compiled by four different editors (often with named co-editors)
and the issues have been as follows:
| E.Bright WILSON Jr. Department of Chemistry, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA  |
Issues 1960-1973: I-XVI 3(1961) 4(1962) 5(1962) 6(1963) 7(1964) 8(1964) 9(1966) 10(1967) 11(1968) 12(1969) 13(1970) 14(1971) 15(1972) The above are scanned versions of issues 3-15 sent to me by Bob Bohn. Issues 1 and 2 have not yet been found so that the date of the first issue is for the time being a guess based on the early pattern of two issues per year. The bitmap scans have been run through optical character recognition so that (when OCR succeeded) the issues are text searchable. It is worth noting that:
|
| Richard H. SCHWENDEMAN Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University, USA |
Issues 1974-1992: XVII-XXXV 16(1973) 17(1974) 18(1975) 19(1976) 20(1977) 21(1978) 22(1979) 23(1980) 24(1981) 25(1982) 26(1983) 27(1984) 28(1985) 29(1986) 30(1987) 31(1988) 32(1989) 33(1990) 34(1991) 35(1992) The change of editorship from Wilson to Schwendeman was a gradual one, since they coedited issues 15-17. The handover date has therefore been set somewhat arbitrarily. Schwendeman also had a number of different coeditors as attested to by these collected cover pages for issues 15-24 sent to me by Frank Lovas. 23(1980): this is a sample issue from that period sent to me with a pile of paper originals by Kaori Kobayashi. There are now 48 numbered pages and 61 contributing labs. The national breakdown in order of the number of labs from a given country is as follows:
33(1990): the number of labs remains relatively stable at 57 but the numbered pages now go up to 77. |
| Frank J. LOVAS NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA |
Issues 1993-1999: XXXVI-XLII These newsletters came in rather official looking envelopes since NIST is administratively under the United States Department of Commerce. Note also the letter from the Editor outlining the aims of the Newsletter, and containing a reminder of the deadline. This was quite important in the days of paper mail and paper processing, and occasionally entries for some labs had to be added in some post-deadline position, as at the end of the 41(1998) issue. 36(1993) 37(1994) 38(1995) 39(1996) 40(1997) 41(1998) 42(1999) |
| Robert K. BOHN Department of Chemistry, University of Connecticut, USA |
Issues 2000-2017: XLIII-LX The newsletter has become more voluminous than ever. The Editor also occasionally added pages of additional information (placed at the very end, after the formula index):
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| Garry GRUBBS II Chemistry, Missouri University of Science and Technology Rolla, USA |
Issues 2018-current: LXI-current 61(2018) 62(2019) 63(2020) 64(2021) 65(2022) |