The American Institute of Physics

For the past two decades the American Institute of Physics has served as the cooperative and unifying agency of the several professional Societies representing physicists in the United States. The Institute was created in 1931 by the joint action of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the Acoustical Society of America, and the Society of Rheology. These Societies, together with the American Association of Physics Teachers, are the corporate members of the Institute. In a sense, the Societies’ decision to join in this act of federation was a reaffirmation of the concept of the word “physics” itself, for although plural both in origin and form, “physics” is used as a singular noun and implies an over‐all unity of several specialized sciences.

This article is only available in PDF format