''Annalen der Physik'' (English: ''Annals of Physics'') is one of the oldest

scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such ...

s on

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...

; it has been published since 1799. The journal publishes original,

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer revie ...

papers on experimental, theoretical, applied, and

mathematical physics Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The '' Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the developm ...

and related areas. The

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

Stefan Hildebrandt Stefan may refer to: * Stefan (given name) * Stefan (surname) * Ștefan, a Romanian given name and a surname * Štefan, a Slavic given name and surname * Stefan (footballer) (born 1988), Brazilian footballer * Stefan Heym, pseudonym of German writ ...

. Prior to 2008, its

ISO 4 ISO 4 (Information and documentation – Rules for the abbreviation of title words and titles of publications) is an international standard which defines a uniform system for the abbreviation of serial publication titles, i.e., titles of publicat ...

abbreviation was ''Ann. Phys. (Leipzig)'', after 2008 it became ''Ann. Phys. (Berl.)''. The journal is the successor to , published from 1790 until 1794, and ', published from 1795 until 1797. The journal has been published under a variety of names (', ', ', ''Wiedemann's Annalen der Physik und Chemie'') during its history.

History

Originally, was published in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

, then a leading scientific language. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the journal published in both German and English. Initially, only foreign authors contributed articles in English but from the 1970s German-speaking authors increasingly wrote in English in order to reach an international audience. After the

German reunification German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

in 1990, English became the only language of the journal. The importance of unquestionably peaked in 1905 with

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

Annus Mirabilis papers The ''annus mirabilis'' papers (from Latin '' annus mīrābilis'', "miracle year") are the four papers that Albert Einstein published in '' Annalen der Physik'' (''Annals of Physics''), a scientific journal, in 1905. These four papers were major ...

. In the 1920s, the journal lost ground to the concurrent ''

Zeitschrift für Physik ''Zeitschrift für Physik'' (English: ''Journal for Physics'') is a defunct series of German peer-reviewed physics journals established in 1920 by Springer Berlin Heidelberg. The series stopped publication in 1997, when it merged with other jour ...

''. With the 1933 emigration wave, German-language journals lost many of their best authors. During

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, it was considered to represent "the more conservative elements within the German physics community", alongside ''

Physikalische Zeitschrift ''Physikalische Zeitschrift'' (English: ''Physical Journal'') was a German scientific journal of physics published from 1899 to 1945 by S. Hirzel Verlag. In 1924, it merged with ''Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik''. From 1944 onwards, ...

''. Between 1944 and 1946 publication ceased due to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Granted permission to restart by Soviet military authorities in August 1946, the journal subsequently maintained a policy until 1992 of co-editorship by one person from East Germany and one from West Germany. After German reunification, the journal was acquired by

Wiley-VCH Wiley-VCH is a German publisher owned by John Wiley & Sons. It was founded in 1921 as Verlag Chemie (meaning "Chemistry Press": VCH stands for ''Verlag Chemie'') by two German learned societies. Later, it was merged into the German Chemical Soci ...

. A relaunch of the journal with new editor and new contents was announced for 2012. As a result of the 2012 relaunch, changed scope and updated the membership of the

editorial board The editorial board is a group of experts, usually at a publication, who dictate the tone and direction the publication's editorial policy will take. Mass media At a newspaper, the editorial board usually consists of the editorial page editor, ...

Editors

The early editors-in-chief were: *

Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren (1 May 1760 – 26 November 1798) was a German chemist and a native of Bernburg. He began his career working in a pharmacy in Bernburg, and later worked as a pharmacist in Offenbach am Main and Erfurt. In 1782 he be ...

(1790–1797) (as and ) *

Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert (12 August 1769 – 7 March 1824) was a German physicist and chemist, and professor of physics at the University of Leipzig. From 1799-1824 he published the "''Annalen der Physik''", of which Poggendorffs "''Annalen d ...

(1799–1824) (as and ) *

Johann Christian Poggendorff Johann Christian Poggendorff (29 December 1796 – 24 January 1877), was a German physicist born in Hamburg. By far the greater and more important part of his work related to electricity and magnetism. Poggendorff is known for his electrostatic ...

(1824–1876) (as ) *

Gustav Heinrich Wiedemann Gustav Heinrich Wiedemann (; 2 October 1826 – 24 March 1899) was a German physicist and scientific author. Life Wiedemann was born in Berlin the son of a merchant who died two years later. Following the death of his mother in 1842 he lived w ...

(1877–1899) (as ) *

Paul Karl Ludwig Drude Paul Karl Ludwig Drude (; 12 July 1863 – 5 July 1906) was a German physicist specializing in optics. He wrote a fundamental textbook integrating optics with Maxwell's theories of electromagnetism. Education Born into an ethnic German family, ...

(1900–1906) (as ) With each editor, the numbering of volumes restarted from 1 (co-existent with a continuous numbering, a perpetual source of confusion). The journal was often referred to by the editor's name: ''Gilberts Annalen'', ''Poggendorfs Annalen'', ''Wiedemanns Annalen'' and so on, or for short ''Pogg. Ann.'', ''Wied. Ann.'' After Drude, the work was divided between two editors: experimentalists

Wilhelm Wien Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien (; 13 January 1864 – 30 August 1928) was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien's displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbod ...

(1907–1928) and

Eduard Grüneisen Eduard Grüneisen (26 May 1877 – 5 April 1949) was a German physicist and the co-eponym of Mie–Grüneisen equation of state. Grüneisen was born in Giebichenstein, near Halle (Saale). The Grüneisen parameter was named after him. Since ...

(1929–1949) and theoretician

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...

(1907–1943, who had been associate editor from 1895). In these times, peer-review was not yet standard. Einstein, for example, just sent his manuscripts to Planck, who then published them.

Notable published works

Some of the most famous papers published in ''Annalen der Physik'' were: * on solving for the currents in an

electronic circuit An electronic circuit is composed of individual electronic components, such as resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors and diodes, connected by conductive wires or traces through which electric current can flow. It is a type of electric ...

by Gustav Kirchhoff (1847), * on

stretched exponential relaxation The stretched exponential function f_\beta (t) = e^ is obtained by inserting a fractional power law into the exponential function. In most applications, it is meaningful only for arguments between 0 and +∞. With , the usual exponential function ...

Rudolf Kohlrausch Rudolf Hermann Arndt Kohlrausch (November 6, 1809 in Göttingen – March 8, 1858 in Erlangen) was a German physicist. Biography He was a native of Göttingen, the son of the Royal Hanovarian director general of schools Friedrich Kohlrausch. He ...

(1854), * on

by Friedrich Kohlrausch (1863,1876), * on the

photoelectric effect The photoelectric effect is the emission of electrons when electromagnetic radiation, such as light, hits a material. Electrons emitted in this manner are called photoelectrons. The phenomenon is studied in condensed matter physics, and solid sta ...

Heinrich Hertz Heinrich Rudolf Hertz ( ; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. The uni ...

(1887), * on the theory of blackbody radiation by

(1901), * on capillarity by

(1901), * the

by Albert Einstein on

photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless, so they alwa ...

s, on

Brownian motion Brownian motion, or pedesis (from grc, πήδησις "leaping"), is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium (a liquid or a gas). This pattern of motion typically consists of random fluctuations in a particle's position insi ...

, on

mass–energy equivalence In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the relationship between mass and energy in a system's rest frame, where the two quantities differ only by a multiplicative constant and the units of measurement. The principle is described by the physicis ...

, and on the

special theory of relativity In physics, the special theory of relativity, or special relativity for short, is a scientific theory regarding the relationship between space and time. In Albert Einstein's original treatment, the theory is based on two postulates: # The law ...

, (1905) * on the heat capacities of solids with quantized energy levels by Einstein (1907), * on molecular motion near

absolute zero Absolute zero is the lowest limit of the thermodynamic temperature scale, a state at which the enthalpy and entropy of a cooled ideal gas reach their minimum value, taken as zero kelvin. The fundamental particles of nature have minimum vibra ...

by Einstein and

Otto Stern :''Otto Stern was also the pen name of German women's rights activist Louise Otto-Peters (1819–1895)''. Otto Stern (; 17 February 1888 – 17 August 1969) was a German-American physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. He was the second most ...

(1913), * on the

general theory of relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric scientific theory, theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current descr ...

by Einstein (1916)

Abstracting and indexing

The journal is abstracted and indexed in: According to the ''

Journal Citation Reports ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Colle ...

'', the journal has a 2015

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...

of 3.443, ranking it 11th out of 79 journals in the category 'Physics Multidisciplinary'.

References

External links