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From the Editor-in-Chief

Endocrine Reviews

The publication Recent Progress in Hormone Research has a distinguished place in the development of endocrinology in the United States. The Hormone Conference of the A.A.A.S. originally met on Gibson Island, in the Chesapeake Bay. In 1944, the venue was moved to Mont Tremblant, in the Laurentian Mountains near Montreal, Canada. There was a strong consensus after that first Laurentian meeting to publish the texts of the presentations, and the result was the first volume of Recent Progress of Hormone Research, edited by Gregory Pincus and published in book form by Academic Press. Pincus was the distinguished Director of the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research, in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Many contributions to endocrinological research came from the scientists there. From that first meeting in 1944, the Laurentian Hormone Conference (or the Laurentian meeting, as it came to be called) became the place to present and hear the best in hormone research. Speakers at the conference tended to be people who had completed an extensive body of work. Consequently, the series of RPHR books contains many summations of important milestones in our field. Following Pincus, E. B. Astwood became the editor of RPHR; then from 1975 to 1986, Roy O. Greep took over the editorship of the series, and from 1987 through 1989 it was edited by James H. Clark. One interesting feature of the RPHR series was that the questions and answers after each talk were published. These often add considerably to one’s understanding of the scientific issues of the time and sometimes give interesting glimpses of the personalities involved.

As years went by, the popularity of the Laurentian meeting began to wane, supplanted by other conferences such as the Gordon Conference on Hormone Action. Eventually, a point was reached at which the meeting was no longer sustainable, but, because of its significance to endocrine history and because of the continued popularity of the RPHR series, The Endocrine Society took over the institution. C. Wayne Bardin assumed the editorial duties, and the RPHR meetings were held at a variety of venues, following the original format. Subsequently, P. Michael Conn organized the meetings and edited the series for the Endocrine Society. But again, meeting attendance sagged, and a decision was made to publish the volumes as compendia of invited papers. This was successfully carried out for several years under the editorship of our current Society President, Tony Means, with assistance from the Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor of Endocrine Reviews. Publication of the book series concluded in 2004, with volume 59 of RPHR, but our Society did not want to let the important tradition and content of the series end. Because we at Endocrine Reviews already had been involved in editing and overseeing its content, the Publications Committee of The Endocrine Society decided to continue the publication of RPHR as an annual special issue of Endocrine Reviews.

This issue of Endocrine Reviews is the first in the new format, continuing the RPHR tradition of selecting as authors representatives of labs that have a long history in working on their subject. Thus, you will see that the articles present primarily the work of the contributor’s laboratory, placed in the context of the general field. They therefore differ from the usual Endocrine Reviews comprehensive review manuscripts and offer the unique perspectives that only individuals personally involved with the work can give. This special RPHR issue is thematic, with papers chosen this year to emphasize the translation of basic research in hormone action to applications in therapy, diagnosis, or prognosis of disease. Alas, our present format no longer allows the immediate follow-up of each article with a ‘Q and A‘ session that can be published along with the papers, but our readers should feel free to communicate with the authors to request clarification on points raised in the published content. We hope that, in this new context, RPHR will continue to provide endocrinologists up-to-date accounts of important and exciting developments in our field of science for years to come.

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