AIP Member Societies entering the 1980’s

The nine Member Societies and their nearly 60 000 members have moved into a new decade, a decade with the promise and the problems of a steady‐state environment. For six of the societies this will be their sixth to ninth decade of existence: The American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society founded in 1899, followed by the Optical Society of America in 1916, the Acoustical Society of America and The Society of Rheology in 1929, and the American Association of Physics Teachers in 1930. The remaining three emerged, in their present form, after World War II: The American Crystallographic Association in 1949, the American Vacuum Society in 1953, and finally the American Association of Physicists in Medicine in 1958. Each decade has presented opportunities which the societies have explored and problems which they have weathered; this new decade will be no exception.

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