Bruce Alberts named new Editor-in-Chief of Science

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Bruce Alberts, president emeritus of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, has been named on Monday by the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to serve as editor-in-chief of its journal Science beginning March 1, 2008.

Alberts, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, will become the 18th editor-in-chief of Science since its inception in 1880.

"I view Science magazine as a critical venue for maintaining the standards of science as well as for spreading an understanding and appreciation for science around the world," Alberts said.

AAAS President David Baltimore applauded the selection of Alberts to lead Science, which has the largest paid circulation ofany general science journal in the world.

"I am overjoyed that Bruce will be the next editor-in-chief of Science," Baltimore said. "His experience, skill, and interest in all of science make him the ideal person to continue the tradition of superb editors who have made Science the premier journal for the scientific community."

Alberts will succeed Donald Kennedy, who assumed the Science editor-in-chief job on June 1, 2000, and announced his retirement plans in June 2007. Kennedy will remain editor-in-chief of Science through the end of February 2008.

Founded in 1880 by Thomas A. Edison, Science has been the official journal of the non-profit AAAS since 1900. In its early days, the journal was best known for physical sciences research, from wireless telegraphy to new chemical elements and early reports of the Wright brothers' flying experiments.

Since then, the journal has published many important biological breakthroughs, too, such as the discovery that brought Mendel's laws of heredity to light, and the historic sequencing of the human genome. Each week, an estimated 1 million people worldwide read the journal at home, and in libraries, schools, and research institutions.