A new National Science Digital Library (NSDL) scholarly publication, Classic Articles in Context (CAC), was launched in April 2008 with an atmospheric science theme: “Climate Change and Anthropogenic Greenhouse Warming: A Selection of Key Articles, 1824-1995, with Interpretive Essays.” Each issue of Classic Articles in Context presents significant scientific questions of the Twentieth Century using landmark and important legacy papers. As a follow-up to this well-received first issue illustrating science as a process that builds, and often turns, on discovery and replication that is expressed in the archival literature of empirical findings, the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) is pleased welcome Academic Editors Dr. Mahesh Mahanthappa, University of Wisconsin and Dr. Peter Levy, New York University, who will edit the next two CAC issues in chemistry and physics.

For the CAC Chemistry Issue, Dr. Mahesh Mahanthappa of the

University of Wisconsin has begun work on “Polymers: From Small Molecules to Useful Macromolecular Materials” (http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/PALE:ClassicArticles/Polymers)*, a collection of primary works in polymer chemistry, spanning over

100 years. Mahanthappa will assemble the collection as part of his NSF CAREER Award.

The NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a

Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

The polymer chemistry issue will begin with studies illustrating the skepticism among many scientists early in the twentieth century over the notion of large “macro” molecules and call attention to the next several decades examining milestones such as the discovery of ethylene oligomerization by nickel salts with trialkylaluminums in the 1950s, and synthesis of stereoregular polypropylenes using rationally designed catalysts in the late 1980s.

In Physics, Dr. Peter Levy, Professor of Physics at New York University, has begun assembling an issue devoted to Giant Magnetoresitance (GMR) entitled “An Idiosyncratic History of Giant

Magnetoresitance”

(http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/PALE:ClassicArticles/GMR)*. This is the research area of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics. Dr. Levy will examine the development of a model for the ‘anomalous’ electrical resistivities of the ferromagnetic transition-metals. This seminal work of Sir Neville Mott in the 1930s will serve as a point of origin for Levy to present studies up through the 1980s, when Nobel Laureates Peter Grünberg and Albert Fert independently achieved GMR through the use of multilayers of magnetic and nonmagnetic metals. Levy will then find work from the 1990s through the early years of the present decade that consider investigations such as injecting spin currents into otherwise nonmagnetic materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene.

Look for the launch of the next two CAC issues–Physics, September

2008 (or early fall 2008) and Chemistry, December 2008 (or late

fall 2008).

*Please note that the URLs cited for these issues are

contact Mike Luby, Director, Publisher Affairs, National Science Digital Library.