ann14033 — Announcement

G. Lecointe
6 November 2014
Towards Celebrating the IAU Centenary

In 2019 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) will be one hundred years old. As part of the preparations for the centenary the IAU has initiated a number of projects, including some that will eventually involve the whole community. The following initiatives have started already:

  • The digitisation of the General Assembly Newspapers: all the Assembly Journals, starting from the Xth General Assembly in Moscow in 1958 and all the General Assembly Newspapers, starting from the XXIVth General Assembly in Manchester in 2000 have been digitised and are available online.
  • The digitisation of the IAU Book Archive: all publications by the IAU since 1922, the year of the first General Assembly in Rome, are being digitised and organised by Cambridge University Press, the current publisher of the IAU. This project should be finished by the end of the year and access will be free.
  • The digitisation of the IAU Document Archive: all IAU internal documents that may be of historical importance will be digitised. These include minutes and notes from the Executive Committee, the correspondence of past General Secretaries and exchanges with other scientific unions and institutions. The anticipated deadline for completion of this project is the General Assembly 2015.
  • The preparation of a Centennial book: this book will be created in collaboration with the community and will be presented at the General Assembly 2018 in Vienna. Progress on this project will be reported in a later announcement.

For the moment, thanks to the hard work of our archivist Ginette Rude and the kind help of past General Secretaries Jean-Claude Pecker and Johannes Andersen, a complete list of all Executive Committees since 1919 has been assembled and put online.

This announcement regarding the projects for the IAU centenary in 2019 is also a good occasion to make a brief presentation of the first Executive Committee — the founding fathers of the IAU — and of a short reflection on the demographics of the IAU over the last 90 years, starting from the first General Assembly, 1922, to the XXVIIIth General Assembly in Beijing, 2012.

More Information

The IAU is the international astronomical organisation that brings together more than 10 000 professional astronomers from almost 100 countries. Its mission is to promote and safeguard the science of astronomy in all its aspects through international cooperation. The IAU also serves as the internationally recognised authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and the surface features on them. Founded in 1919, the IAU is the world's largest professional body for astronomers.

Links

Contacts

Thierry Montmerle
IAU General Secretary / Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
Paris, France
Tel: +33 1 43 25 83 58
Email: montmerle@iap.fr

Lars Lindberg Christensen
IAU Press Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 320 06 761
Cell: +49 173 38 72 621
Email: lars@eso.org

About the Announcement

Id:
ann14033

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G. Lecointe