Publishing and the Advancement of Science

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Foreword
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements

I read with huge enjoyment Diana Athill's Stet: An Editor's Life (2000) and Jeremy Lewis's Grub Street Irregular: Scenes from a Literary Life (2008) shortly after they were published. Both are wonderfully written, both give outsiders an engrossing view of life in the world of book publishing. And in both cases the worlds described concern literature. As far as I know, no one has written about publishing from the point of view of science…

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking was published in 1988 and it famously became a publishing phenomenon, going on to sell over ten million copies. It became a part of popular culture, with references to it in mainstream films, including Legally Blonde, Donnie Darko (both 2001) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), and in an episode of the television serial Lost (episode 7 of series 3, in 2007). Yet, also famously, the book has had many fewer readers than buyers. The outsider might be forgiven for finding all of this wholly bemusing. What was going on?…

My background before publishing was in science. At university I studied chemistry: research for a doctorate after my first degree, followed by a year in America on a postdoctoral fellowship. On return to the UK I tried two different sorts of career. The first was as a research chemist in industry but this lasted less than a year when I finally realized that research wasn't really for me. And the other was as a chemistry teacher at a grammar school. This second attempt to find the right job initially worked well—I much enjoyed teaching—but the period when I felt I might have found the right occupation ended after a couple of years, and I later worked out why. First had come the discovery that there were parts of the course that I had never completely understood when I was at school myself. Revisiting them, knowing that I now had to master them, produced some eureka moments when explanations finally dawned on me. And these moments led in turn to spontaneous enthusiasm when I was in front of a class. After two years I had covered the complete syllabus and the magical moments of discovery had dried up: I concluded that I was not after all cut out to be a schoolteacher…

In the summer of 1972 management consultants, a firm called Cooper Brothers, descended on the Clarendon Press, their mission to identify what might be improved, from the minutiae of systems and procedures to grander matters of publishing policy. Two consequences, one from each of those extremes of that spectrum, have remained in my memory. The detailed one concerned the Press's filing system, a subject normally guaranteed to lead instantly to the glazing-over of eyes. It actually led to the end of something rather wonderful, and it produced too a memorably comic moment…

This chapter is about textbooks, and largely about one in particular, a textbook of physical chemistry. There, I've said it, and already I sense that some readers are wondering whether to give this one a miss. Could there really be anything about a physical chemistry textbook capable of capturing the imagination of the general reader? The answer is actually yes: there is in fact an interesting tale to be told about how this one came about. Let me now convince you…

In 1974, Dan Davin, head of the OUP's academic division, the new name for the Clarendon Press, told me that it had been decided to split science publishing into two separate departments, saying that he'd like me to take charge of one of them. I had by then been the science field editor for five years and while I still loved the job I was increasingly feeling pangs of regret when handing over to my in-house editorial colleagues projects I'd nurtured to the stage when they were ready for formal commissioning. So there was a desire on my part to come inside and take responsibility for my own list; Dan's invitation had come at just the right time. What needed to be settled was how the science list was to be divided. Between physical science and, the part for me, biological science, Dan wondered, or ‘another way’? I didn't hesitate to go for the ‘another way’ option because by then I was quite clear about the sorts of books that most interested me: textbooks, trade (meaning for a general readership) reference books, and popular science. On 1 October 1974 the College, Reference, and Popular Science department was officially born, and it felt wonderful: reporting directly to Dan, the Oxford Publisher, I'd been given the freedom to build my own list. As a department it was by any standard tiny, but that was fine by me. I had no desire to be in charge of an empire, with lots of people reporting to me; more than anything I wanted to work with authors and publish individual books that would stand out from the crowd, sell, and make money…

W. H. Freeman and Company was founded in 1946 in San Francisco. The first book it published, a general chemistry textbook, was by the renowned Linus Pauling; and later celebrated texts included Lubert Stryer's Biochemistry and Jim Watson's Recombinant DNA. I have a tee shirt, produced in the 1990s by the marketing department for a sales conference, listing no fewer than ten Nobel laureates published by Freeman: an astonishing number for any publisher, let alone one of Freeman's modest size. The firm was also noted for the outstanding design and high production standards of its books and catalogues. I had visited them in San Francisco towards the end of 1976, taking for signature the OUP contract for the North American rights for Atkins's Physical Chemistry, and enjoyed meeting its enthusiastic editors, appreciating the lively atmosphere they created. So, at the beginning of February in 1979 I reckoned this was a good place to be for the next stage of my career as a commissioning editor…

After the upheavals of my final months at the OUP, followed by the uncertainties hanging over my survival during the unsettling last year at W. H. Freeman, I was more than ready for a stable environment when I arrived at Longman on 4 November 1982. Everything certainly felt exactly right, this initial impression reinforced by the warm welcome I received from friendly colleagues…

It was strange and strangely wonderful, returning to my old office at 20 Beaumont Street in Oxford, having vacated it some nine years earlier when I left W. H. Freeman. I already knew Graham Voaden, now managing director in charge of Freeman's UK office, and we got on well: he was easy-going and I enjoyed his company. My brief was to build a list from scratch, to be marketed and sold in the UK and Europe by W. H. Freeman Ltd, the Oxford office, and in North America and elsewhere by W. H. Freeman Inc, based in New York. In meetings with the management at Spektrum in Heidelberg at the beginning of the summer of 1991, I had outlined the sort of list I wanted to grow—a mix of popular science titles, mainstream textbooks in chemistry, and a small number of biology texts centred around evolution, a list that would complement the Freeman Inc list in New York—and the plan was accepted…

Over the year I listened to many a valedictory speech at leaving parties at the OUP and without exception the speakers all singled out one thing they would miss: being surrounded by such a stimulating group of colleagues. They were all spot on in this regard, and I felt the real buzz of being back at the Press from the first day of my return…

The first scientific anecdote I can remember hearing, recounted by my boss Bruce Wilcock during my early days at the OUP in the 1970s, describes a charming episode involving Edward Bullard. Bullard (1907–1980) was a distinguished British geophysicist and the incident took place when he was visiting an American university, on sabbatical leave. Shortly after his arrival (alas, I am not able to provide even an approximate date), Bullard was contacted by the local radio station. They liked to interview visitors to the university about their work: would he be happy to record a conversation in the studio, to be broadcast later? Afterwards, chatting to the station manager as he was being shown out of the building, Bullard asked at what time the programme would be going out on air. Astonished at the response, 2 a.m., he said he was surprised that anyone would be listening at that hour. The station manager assured him that the slot had a devoted following amongst truck drivers. By now wholly bemused, Bullard expressed amazement that truck drivers would find geophysics interesting. It was the American's turn to be taken aback. ‘Geophysics? Gee, we thought you were a palaeontologist’…

I retired from the OUP towards the end of 2003, but it was several years before the idea of attempting to write about publishing gradually took hold of me. There were some interesting tales to tell, or at least I convinced myself that there were, but this was not the principal reason for wanting to try my hand as an author. The real motivation came from wanting to communicate to others something of the intellectual excitement I'd experienced ‘meeting and working with extraordinary people, and discovering at first hand ideas that, when hearing about them for the first time, were simply breathtaking’, as I put it towards the end of my Prologue. I wanted to open windows and let the ideas themselves seduce the general reader, especially one with no background in science. For me, it would be wonderful if reading just one of my stories ignited enough curiosity to motivate someone to go out and buy and read the book in question…

The following sections are included:

• Notes and references
• Index