Landolt-Börnstein, the largest compilation of data in physics and chemistry, celebrates its 125th birthday on 29 September 2008.
The reference work was published by the physicist Hans Landolt and the chemist Richard Börnstein in 1883; in the New Series, it now comprises more than 360 printed volumes and over 55,000 electronic documents for engineers and scientists. All the articles appear in English and present the state of the art in research on applied physics, chemistry, and materials research and development. Landolt-Börnstein was published by Springer right from the start and has always played a decisive role in defining the publishing company’s scientific path.
“The comprehensive compilation of data has undergone important fundamental changes in the course of its long history. The biggest revolution no doubt happened when the entire documents were made available on the Internet,” said Rainer Poerschke, who has been in charge of Landolt-Börnstein since 1990. On its 125th anniversary, Poerschke will be handing over his post to Karin Sora (formerly of Wiley-VCH), who has been appointed Executive Editor of “La-Bö” with immediate effect.
More than a thousand authors from the scientific and research community worldwide write and review the articles for Landolt-Börnstein. This expertise represents a systematic and critical collection of physics, physico-chemical and technical data in the disciplines elementary particles, condensed matter, modern materials and technology, physical chemistry, astrophysics, biophysics and geophysics.
Landolt-Börnstein Online gives users direct access to the data; the navigation within the individual volumes and tables of content provide targeted search results. The digital relaunch of the product will take place in 2009, a timely decision based on Springer’s many years of experience in publishing.