Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 94, pp. 5983–5985, June 1997 Perspective The PNAS way back then Saunders Mac Lane, Chairman Proceedings Editorial Board, 1960–1968 Department of Mathematics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 Contributed by Saunders Mac Lane, March 27, 1997 This essay is to describe my experience with the Proceedings of ings. Bronk knew that the Proceedings then carried lots of math. the National Academy of Sciences up until 1970. Mathemati- The Council met. Detlev was not a man to put off till to cians and other scientists who were National Academy of tomorrow what might be done today. So he looked about the Science (NAS) members encouraged younger colleagues by table in that splendid Board Room, spotted the only mathe- communicating their research announcements to the Proceed- matician there, and proposed to the Council that I be made ings. For example, I can perhaps cite my own experiences. S. Chairman of the Editorial Board. Then and now the Council Eilenberg and I benefited as follows (communicated, I think, did not often disagree with the President. Probably nobody by M. H. Stone): ‘‘Natural isomorphisms in group theory’’ then knew that I had been on the editorial board of the (1942) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 28, 537–543; and “Relations Transactions, then the flagship journal of the American Math- between homology and homotopy groups” (1943) Proc. Natl. ematical Society. Acad. Sci. USA 29, 155–158. Soon after this, the Treasurer of the Academy, concerned The second of these papers was the first introduction of a about costs, requested the introduction of page charges for geometrical object topologists now call an “Eilenberg–Mac papers published in the Proceedings. At that time mathemati- Lane Space.” This idea was immediately accepted by leading cians did not have large grants, so most of them stopped topologists, with later detailed presentation by the authors in submitting to the Proceedings. specialized journals. The Proceedings presentation of this idea At that time I probably thought that the Proceedings was helped Eilenberg and me by its promptness. a rousing success (biochemistry plus timely research an- The first of these papers is a more striking case; it nouncements). So the indication was for full speed ahead and introduced the very abstract idea of a “category”—a subject damn the torpedoes. I had also studied at Yale and firmly then called “general abstract nonsense”! When Eilenberg believed that Josiah Willard Gibbs was the greatest Amer- and I submitted a full presentation in 1945 (to the Transac- ican scientist of the 19th century. I knew that the famous tions of the American Mathematical Society), we feared that Gibbs–Wilson book on vector analysis had succeeded in the editor would turn it down as too “far out,” not really setting vector notation in stone in every book in physics. I mathematics. So Eilenberg, who knew the editor well, per- had first learned the real facts about calculus from a book by suaded him to choose as referee a young mathematician— Edwin Bidwell Wilson, Advanced Calculus, a text not en- one whom we could influence because he was then a junior cumbered by the modern-day nonsense of calculus ‘‘reform.’’ member of the Applied Mathematics Group at Columbia And I had heard the same E. B. Wilson hold forth in University (war research), where Eilenberg and I were then meetings of the Academy, educating new members as to also members, and I was Director. what the Constitution and Bylaws actually said (E.B. really Happily the full paper was accepted, but the subject itself knew). was well off beat and not generally recognized, and it was Just imagine my pleasure finding that this E. B. Wilson was ignored till 1958, when a student of Eilenberg’s made an still the Managing Editor. His (later) History of the Proceedings important breakthrough. So in this case publication in the of the National Academy of Sciences is careful to state that (as Proceedings was perhaps vital at the start; Category Theory is just a manager) he never set policies for the Proceedings. But now accepted. In other words, without the Proceedings, this I can assure you that he was happy to help educate the young; idea might well have been buried, unpublished. in four years he wrote me about 50 letters in this cause. As a These circumstances may have played in part in my own result it would not have occurred to me to consult the NAS election to the NAS in 1949, at the age of 40. Constitution or the NAS Council as to Proceedings policy—I Later rumors had it that a young biochemist, whose paper had the real source right there on tap! had been rejected by the Journal of Biological Chemistry, I followed standard procedure: papers by members or managed to persuade an Academy member to communicate communicated by members were of course accepted. There his result to the Proceedings. This paper presently led to a was no refereeing. I did know that the then editorial assistant Nobel prize; the rumor continues to assert that Wendell (Ms. Josephine Williams) usually acknowledged papers by Stanley, then Proceedings chairman, told this to many col- members with enthusiastic praise for the brilliant results leagues, who responded; with fast publication in mind, they presented. I suspected that this praise was sometimes overdone came up with more communication to the Proceedings. and might not have been based on deep knowledge, but I did About 1958 a senior member of an NAS nominating com- not interfere; after all, Ms. Williams managed matters well, so mittee noticed that it was a long time since the Section of saved me lots of trouble. Mathematics had been represented on the Council. I was On some occasions there were rejections, but such occasions nominated. In those early days there was no competition by were really rare, both scientifically and diplomatically—I multiple candidates, so I was elected. would not have rejected a paper unless I was quite sure that I In 1959, apparently just before a meeting of the Council, would get away with it! I recall only two cases. President Detlev Bronk got the news that Prof. Stanley was ill A member of the NAS whom I thought to be quite old submitted a manuscript which tended to support this diagnosis. and wished to resign the position of Chairman of the Proceed- I rejected that paper. I do not believe I used a referee. Linus Pauling communicated a paper by a medical friend © 1997 by The National Academy of Sciences 0027-8424y97y945983-3$2.00y0 who was a doctor in a Glasgow (U.K.) hospital for cancer 5983 Downloaded by guest on September 28, 2021 5984 Perspective: Mac Lane Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94 (1997) patients. The paper presented evidence for the good effects of number 1 German mathematician; today Weyl’s views on the vitamin C. It was my clear impression that by this time most matter are generally accepted.) But the publication by Birkhoff experts were very dubious about Pauling’s views on vitamins put the problem out in the open. And for that matter, Birkhoff and cancer. I rejected the paper; the expected blast from had already announced in the Proceedings one of his most Pauling did not appear. famous results: the Ergodic Theorem. For Birkhoff this In 1967, the President of the Academy, Fred Seitz, invited amounts to one strike-out and one home run with the bases a prominent politician, Emilio Daddario, to give an address loaded. Better both than neither. at the autumn 1967 meeting of the Academy. He came The Proceedings is there to help bring new ideas promptly complete with the manuscript of his speech. President Seitz into play. New ideas may not always be right, but their communicated this manuscript to the Proceedings. (At that prominent presence can lead to correction. We must be careful time the journal Issues in Science and Technology did not not to censor even those ideas which seem to be off beat. exist.) I considered this paper totally inappropriate for the P.S. Here are more additional samples of important papers Proceedings, but I was aware of the possible extent of my communicated to the Proceedings. mandate. Moreover, I had just recently arranged to have R John Edsall appointed as Associate Chairman of the Edito- The Continuum Hypothesis. The infinite set of all real rial Board, and I may have felt that an eight-year term of numbers is larger than the infinite set N of all whole numbers office was enough. In any event, I resigned the Proceedings (reason: no numbered list r1, r2, r3,... can exhaust the real chairmanship. numbers). George Cantor, the founder of set theory, conjec- I continued to admire the Proceedings from a distance, as do tured in 1885 that there is no set both bigger than N and smaller my fellow mathematicians. We have a tradition in these than R (the Continuum Hypothesis). This remained a famous matters. In France, E. Cauchy from about 1840 published so and unsolved problem for many years. Finally, in 1940 the many of his important results in the Comptes Rendues that the noted logician Kurt Godel constructed a model of set theory authorities at the Academie des Sciences introduced page in which the Continuum Hypothesis is true: The Consistency of limits. But also Fourier and Cauchy were responsible for the the Continuum Hypothesis, Annals of Mathematical Studies failure to publish there the revolutionary work of Evariste (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ). Galois (who used group theory to settle famous questions It was widely rumored that Godel was also able to construct about the solution of polynomial equations of higher degree).