Editing Centenary Scientific Manuscripts

Over the last fifteen years, six edition projects have produced twenty volumes of correspondence and lectures by some of the central figures of 20th-century physics and mathematics: Albert Einstein, Felix Hausdorff, David Hilbert, Tullio Levi-Civita, H.A. Lorentz, Arnold Sommerfeld, and Henri Poincaré. While there is large overlap in the readership of these works, and in the nature of editorial efforts that go into their production, there has been no collegial reflection on questions such as: What documents should be published? What is the best format for publication? Who are our readers, and how are they best served? It is high time that an - informal - retrospective evaluation be made of the published volumes, with respect to a variety of criteria, including document selection, manuscript annotation, cross-referencing, use of secondary literature, and indexation. An editing workshop is one way to go about doing this.

Along with a retrospective evaluation, a prospective outlook is in order. An array of new tools is available to historians, including comprehensive bibliographic databases, digitized documents (including manuscripts and non-text images), as well as specialized discussion lists, and participative on-line encyclopedias. How should we edit scientific manuscripts to meet best the needs of readers in this brave new world of electronic information exchange?

In virtue of the open exchange of information and views which I trust will characterize this workshop, participants should come away (at the least) better-equipped to make informed decisions about the future direction of scientific manuscript edition projects. Novel ideas, well thought-out, presented and defended during the workshop will be published in a dedicated issue of an academic journal in the history and philosophy of science.