The American Physical Society

The American Physical Society was founded on May 20, 1899 by a group of about forty physicists who met in a small lecture room in Columbia University’s Fayerweather Hall in New York City. The first regular meeting of the Society was held five months later. Before that time, physicists had customarily joined in the annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, its Section B being concerned primarily with physics. The formation of an independent Society for the “advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics” was only one of a series of events marking the swift development of physics in the history of American science.

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