Obituary - Prof. Wolf Beiglböck (1939–2024): Reminiscences on the architect of the European Physical Journal and Founding Editor of EPJ H

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Published on 17 December 2024

This short text is not intended as a traditional obituary nor, certainly, do its authors make any attempt to do justice to Wolf Beiglböck’s many other roles outside scientific publishing, e.g., as academic researcher and teacher [1]. What is more, no doubt others could add many details of his multiple, diverse contributions toward establishing Springer-Verlag as a major international publishing house in physics (including astronomy and mathematical physics), for which in the late 1960s he became an external scientific advisor, yet for all practical purposes acting as a fully fledged publishing editor.

A few such contributions are readily evident from the writings of others, e.g., in [2], about the early years of Communications in Mathematical Physics or from his own account in [3] of the launch of Lecture Notes in Physics and, last but not least, also from his legacy of technical developments, having introduced LaTeX-based production workflows during the 1980s when Springer was the publisher, under his supervision, of Astronomy and Astrophysics (1969–2000). He did so, collaborating with his wife, Urda Beiglböck, a programmer who had also worked for Springer part-time for many years and who passed away in 2014.

Yet, Wolf Beiglböck’s masterpiece, perhaps, was his decisive contribution to the “unification” of several major Europe-based physics journals, where he led the initiative from the Springer-Verlag side. With negotiations starting in 1995 and after only a few years, the European Physical Journal (EPJ) would be launched in 1998 as a merger of all of Zeitschrift für Physik, most of Journal de Physique (published by EDP Sciences, then still owned by the French Physical Society) and most of Il Nuovo Cimento (published by the Italian Physical Society, SIF). More on the history of the merging journals and some of the subsequent developments can be found in [4] and [5].

Among the early EPJ-branded developments at Springer after the initial merger, through Wolf Beiglböck’s initiative and under his guidance, was the launch of the open-access journal EPJ direct in 2000 [6].

He had already anticipated the long-term success of open-access publishing that came along with the launch of the first such journals in the late 1990s, which was quite some time before the much publicized open-access declarations of Budapest, Bethesda and Berlin that followed a couple of years later. While that journal, for the lack of any supporting structures at Springer at the time—these would come only in 2004 following those declarations—was short-lived, in hindsight, the experience prepared us well for successfully negotiating the creation of what would become SCOAP3 and eventually make EPJC a diamond open-access journal later on.

In the mid-2000s, the EPJ publishing partners jointly considered expanding the EPJ portfolio further, and EPJ H (Historical Perspectives on Contemporary Physics), launched in 2010, is among the fruits of these efforts. The seminal idea for EPJ H emerged in 2005¹, and Wolf Beiglböck—about to end his official activities for Springer, and as a consultant for EPJ—presented the plans for what he tentatively entitled “The European Physical Journal—History and Philosophy” to both the EPJ Steering and Scientific Advisory Committees in April 2007 in Bologna. While it would still take a couple of years to fine-tune the proposal and gather academic support, Wolf Beiglböck’s retirement from all consultancy work made it also possible for him to accept everyone’s plea to take the helm of the new journal. With his typical exacting attitude, he would not let himself be called editor in chief—since he acknowledged he had no formal training in the history of physics—but was all the more determined as the journal’s founding and managing editor to extensively mediate between the physicists and the historians on the editorial board on each and every paper submitted and deemed suitable of further consideration [7].

Another important reason for asking Wolf Beiglböck to lead the launch phase of the journal was his very substantial professional network: Quite a few of the authors who initially contributed to the journal during his time as managing editor were authors and editors of the many book series and other journals he had managed during his time at Springer, and who happily contributed in view of their long-standing personal collaboration with him. His last term as managing editor of EPJ H ended in 2020.

Wolf Beiglböck (fourth from the right) surrounded by his colleagues from the EPJH Editorial Board (from left to right: Simon Mitton, Tilman Sauer, Michael Eckert, Francesco Guerra, Helge Kragh, Allan Franklin, Luisa Bonolis), Editorial Board Meeting, Paris 2017 (picture taken by Sabine Lehr).

When, in April of 2023, a large group of EPJ publishers, scientific advisors and editors in chief met to celebrate the 25th anniversary in Zurich, Wolf Beiglböck was the invited guest of honor at the evening banquet, and we cheered the person, without whose vision, initiatives and contributions over a quarter century ago, none of this would have been imaginable or possible.

Happily retired as he then was, in November 2024, we lost Wolf Beiglböck for the second time, now irrevocably, as our esteemed mentor and teacher in the Springer physics editorial department in Heidelberg, where he had been our inspiring, prodigious and supportive colleague for so many years.

Christian Caron & Sabine Lehr

Footnote

¹ To the best of the recollections from one of us (CC), this happened at the occasion of the SIF Congresso in Catania in 2005, while standing together with Wolf Beiglböck at the SIF booth, noticing the many displayed copies of the Quaderni di Storia della Fisica and asking ourselves how about considering doing a history journal for EPJ as one of the possible EPJ expansion projects. There is some touching irony here inasmuch as Quaderni di Storia della Fisica merged eventually into EPJ H in 2024.

References

1. Mathematiker im Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon - Wolf Beiglböck http://histmath-heidelberg.de/hgl/hgl-beigl.htm (in German, accessed 25.11.2024)

2. Jaffe, A. 50 Years of Communications in Mathematical Physics! In International Association of Mathematical Physics News Bulletin July 2015 pp. 15–26 https://www.iamp.org/bulletins/old-bulletins/Bulletin-July2015-print.pdf (accessed 25.11.2024)

3. Beiglböck, W. The Formative Years, Preface to “Sketches of Physics - The Celebration Collection”, Citro, R. et al. (Eds.) Lecture Notes in Physics Vol. 1000, Springer Cham, 2023 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32469-7

4. See https://www.epj.org/archives, especially Beiglböck, W. Zeitschrift für Physik: A Historical Reminiscence https://www.epj.org/images/stories/archives/zeitschrift_fur_physic.pdf (accessed 25.11.2024)

5. Caron, C. The Springer/SIF journal collaboration over the last two decades – a Springer perspective, Il Nuovo Saggiatore, Vol. 37, 3–4, 2021 (https://www.ilnuovosaggiatore.sif.it/article/279)

6. Volumes and issues |EPJ direct https://link.springer.com/journal/10105/volumes-and-issues. By today’s standards the journal was only “free access” as specific CC BY licenses did not yet exist.

7. Beiglböck, W. Editorial. EPJ H 35, 1–2 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjh/e2010-00005-y

8. Caron, C., Lehr, S. Obituary—Prof. Wolf Beiglböck (1939–2024): Reminiscences on the architect of the European Physical Journal and Founding Editor of EPJ H. EPJ H 49, 23 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjh/s13129-024-00087-2