Floyd E. Bloom, chairman of the neuropharmacology department at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., was named as the new editor-in-chief of Science last month. Bloom replaces Daniel E. Koshland, Jr., a University of California, Berkeley, molecular biologist who edited the journal for 10 years. According to the Washington, D.C.-based American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which publishes Science, the multidisciplinary publication is the largest peer-reviewed journal in science.
"I'm excited and somewhat intimidated by the task," Bloom says.
Like his predecessor, Bloom plans to stay on at his California laboratory, overseeing the news and original research content of the journal through the liberal use of telephones, faxes, and "other alternatives to avoid living on the East Coast." Indeed, Bloom, who visited with Koshland to discuss directions in which the publication might be taken, notes that electronic communications with authors, reviewers, and readers might play an...