And a New Book Review Editor for SIAM
December 7, 1999
Bruce Kellogg, book review editor at SIAM Review from 1996 to 1999, stepped in at a transition time for the journal. \"He looked for books that would both interest and challenge SIREV readers,\" says SIAM journals publisher Mary Rose Muccie. \"He made sure that there was something for everyone in the book review section. . . . He also did a remarkable job developing a list of reviewers who represented a wide range of areas in the mathematical sciences.\"
"You know, I really love books," Robert E. O'Malley, Jr., told Margaret Wright on accepting her invitation to become the book review editor of SIAM Review. Wright was not surprised---she had, after all, good reasons for offering him the job. And the friends whose gift he is about to open in the photograph in "A Turning Point for Bob O'Malley", if they had any doubts, would have been reassured by his statement.
O'Malley has had a long and fruitful association with books at SIAM. He was vice president for publications from 1986 to 1989, and he is the current editor of the Classics book series. Even in his much-discussed "trip report" on ICIAM 99 (SIAM News, September 1999), he managed to work in references not only to the biography of George Green that he successfully championed for publication as a SIAM Classic, but also to his plane reading (both ways) and to various classic texts in mathematics.
On July 1, with the end of Bruce Kellogg's term in the SIAM Review position, O'Malley took over. Hehas already departed from tradition by establishing an editorial board (Pam Cook, University of Delaware; Arieh Iserles, Cambridge University; Mark Kot, University of Tennessee; and Jet Wimp, Drexel University).
"The book review business is going quite well," he tells SIAM News. Some reviews solicited by Kellogg are still coming in, and he looks forward to reviews of more popular books, along with lively reviews of technical books, for upcoming issues. It seems clear that SIAM Review readers also have much to look forward to.
