THE VISION OF PAUL H. RIBBE AND THE REMARKABLE STORY OF “REVIEWS”

Thirty years ago, a small unassuming book entitled “Sulfide Minerals” appeared. Soft-bound in a bright yellow cover, it was printed at a tiny press in Blacksburg, Virginia. The editor was Paul H. Ribbe, a well-known feldspar mineralogist. The print run was a few hundred, and not many people noticed. Today, the same series, covering a multitude of topics in mineralogy, petrology, and geochemistry, has grown to a staggering 25,000+ pages in 57 volumes. Known for excellence and comprehensiveness, over 200,000 copies of these books have been sold or distributed to libraries worldwide. It is fair to say that these books have touched the scientific life of nearly every mineralogist, petrologist, and geochemist in the world since the 1970’s.

The roots of “Reviews”, as the series has come to be known, can be traced to 1965 when Paul led a workshop on feldspars sponsored by AGI. The set of notes that accompanied the workshop, written by Paul, as well as J.V. Smith and Dave Stewart, was actually the prototype that would eventually inspire Paul to create the sulfide volume under the series title “Short Course Notes” nine years later. With MSA as sponsor, Paul continued with five more volumes under the Short Course Notes banner. Now firmly established, Paul changed the series name to “Reviews in Mineralogy” in 1980 with volume 7. However, by volume 38 (1999), the Reviews series was covering fields far beyond mineralogy and petrology, the principal environs of MSA, so a move was made to include the Geochemical Society as a co-publisher of the series starting with volume 39 in 2000. Since that time, the series has been known as “Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry” (RiMG). Paul remained series editor throughout, finally retiring just last year. The series is now skillfully managed and edited by Jodi Rosso.

Today, on the RiMG website, one has instant access to a complete style manual for creating a volume in the Reviews series, a short course budget template, and an author copyright agreement form, among other documents. Short courses and volumes are planned years in advance due to their popularity. One might wonder if Paul, back in 1974, could have possibly imagined what was to become of what he started, a brilliant series created by scientists, for scientists, on a global scale. I image, actually, that he did.