The Journal of the London Mathematical Society was founded in 1926, its first issue being published in January of that year. To celebrate, the Society is publishing a special centenary issue comprising a collection of short survey articles based on a selection of articles from the Journal over the years. Each survey, written by an expert but with a broad audience in mind, comprises an overview of the main results in the original paper together with a discussion of its subsequent influence and further developments. About 30 papers have been commissioned with the aim of showcasing the range and influence of the Journal’s articles over its 100 years of publication. Together they provide a fascinating window into developments in diverse parts of mathematics over the last century.
The first tranche of the special issue articles have now been published in the Journal, and the remainder will be added over the year. Look out for further details in the LMS e-Updates, the LMS Newsletter and elsewhere.
The introductory article on the founding of the Journal by June Barrow-Green reveals the challenges of the time: the combination of the high costs of printing and typesetting mathematics and the substantial increase in research mathematicians. There simply weren’t enough journals for British mathematicians to publish their work. We learn about the central role that G.H. Hardy played in the Journal’s foundation, both through securing the crucial funding necessary and by using his influence to ensure a high-quality international outlook from the outset. Today, far from being a financial drain as in the early years, publications are an important source of income for the LMS. All of the Society’s publishing profits are reinvested in supporting mathematicians and mathematics research in the form of research and conference grants, prizes, initiatives for early career researchers and the general promotion of mathematics.
Mathematical surveys in the special issue include John Guckenheimer on ‘The legacy of the Cartwright– Littlewood collaboration’, the famous 1945 paper that is credited with becoming one of the foundational works of chaos theory, Peter Cameron on 'Hall’s marriage theorem' from his 1935 work, and Anup Rao’s ‘The story of sunflowers’ on Erdös and Rado’s 1960 paper ‘Intersection theorems for systems of sets’.
The Journal has evolved considerably over the years. The initial editorial committee was followed by a phase up until 1951 when editorial work was handled by Secretaries, themselves mathematicians. The Journal then had a single editor until 1979, after which there were two. Following a major reorganisation in 2023, the Bulletin and Journal now have a joint Editorial Board, with around 85 handling editors divided into seven broad sections, each overseen by a Section Editor. The enterprise is coordinated by the LMS editorial staff working together with the two Managing Editors, who are the authors of this article. The recent changes have already made a significant improvement in the speed and efficiency with which papers are handled, leading to a 25% reduction in the average time from submission to acceptance.
Caroline Series and Stuart White
JLMS Managing Editors