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H ISTORY
A Forum of The American Physical Society • Volume VIII, No.3 • Fall 2001
of Physics NEWSLETTER
Trolling with PROLA –Benjamin Bederson, Forum Chair The history of physics and the practice of physics are closely intertwined, a not particularly surprising or original observation. There are many reasons for this connection, among them being the fact that physics as a modern scientific enterprise is young enough so that many physicists who are active today have had careers that stretch back to about half the duration of what one might call modern physics. This relation is especially evident when we head to the library and start working our way back through the literature as we try to trace the precursors of some topic of current interest, acting in either a history or a research mode. Doing this by going to the stacks and pulling out older and older volumes eventually becomes more of an endurance challenge than a scholarly activity. Electronic journals and linkages will eventually change all this, provided such tricky matters as copyright protection and reprint fees can be worked out. That is, there are no fatal technical roadblocks to this wonderful future, although there are potentially serious ones of a nontechnical nature. Ignoring the nontechnical problems for the moment, it will become possible eventually to click on any reference and work one’s way backwards through as many forks in the road, and as far, as we
like, through any journal by any publisher which gives us permission to do so. We are not there yet, but there is a dramatic specific illustration of the shape of things to come, one for which APS physi-
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