Ron Watson

<p>Rosbaud, as a Springer Verlag protégé, was also at the initial meeting and was to edit the journal which the board proposed to publish. Rosbaud was another who had lived in the world of espionage and he had been introduced to Butterworth by Vanden Heuvel.

The development of the Butterworth-Springer company was of labyrinthine complexity in its financial and company arrangements, and by 1948 Butterworth was becoming concerned about the links between Springer Verlag and Maxwell. A Butterworth account says that Rosbaud was at this time not on the Butterworth payroll, but working for them freelance. His reports on visits to Springer Verlag tended to reach Quennell via Vanden Heuvel, who got to know Robert Maxwell through Whitlock.

In the summer of 1950 the Scientific Sales Manager of Butterworth, Ron Watson, believed that Butterworth-Springer worked more to the advantage of Springer than Butterworth. As a consequence, and after discussions in Berlin with Dr Lange and Ferdinand Springer, Butterworth decided to pull out of the partnership. In May 1951 Butterworth &nbsp;agreed to sell its interests to Maxwell for British Pounds (BP) 13,000 net and to a change of name for the company to Pergamon Press Ltd. (an original intention to change it to Parthenon Press was abandoned). Butterworth waived a debt of BP 23,547 owed to it by Butterworth-Springer, which meant it emerged from what it calls an “adventure” showing a loss of BP 10,547.

The stock of titles published by Butterworth-Springer and handed to Pergamon, thus forming the beginning of Pergamon’s book list,consisted of five books and the following three journals:

Spectrochimica Acta (bought by Vanden Heuvel for Butterworth from the Vatican)1. Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta.</p>