Blume, Ginsparg Receive Meritorious Achievement Award

The Council of Science Editors has presented its highest award, the Meritorious Achievement Award, to two co-recipients, Martin Blume and Paul Ginsparg. Blume is APS editor in chief, with responsibility for all of the Physical Review journals, Physical Review Letters, and Reviews of Modern Physics. Ginsparg is a professor of physics and computing and information sciences at Cornell University, and founder of the Los Alamos Electronic Preprint Archive.

The CSE’s primary mission is promoting excellence in the communication of scientific information. According to a CSE statement, Blume and Ginsparg were honored “for their unique contributions, vision, leadership, integrity, and passion,” which “have forced editors and publishers to re-evaluate old and current procedures, policies, and modes of disseminating information… helping to ensure the viability of science journals, in whatever form they may take, as well as the work of science editors and publishers.”

Ginsparg received a PhD in physics from Cornell. He has held academic and research positions at Harvard, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Cornell, specializing in quantum field theory and string theory and digital knowledge networks.

In 1991, he developed the Los Alamos Electronic Preprint Archive, now called arXiv, an open eprint service with more than 1 million articles in physics, and tens of thousands of articles in mathematics, nonlinear science, computer science, and quantitative biology.

Blume received a PhD in physics from Harvard. Following a Fulbright Fellowship at Tokyo University, he held positions at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in England, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Blume helped develop the APS Guidelines for Professional Conduct, including supplementary guidelines on Responsibilities of Coauthors and Collaborators, Research Results, and References in Publication. He frequently writes and speaks about the challenges of electronic publishing.