Аннотация

The article "Venus - a Youthful Planet " was written in 1963 and was offered for publication in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society by Professor H. H. Hess, a member of that Society.
The paper was discussed at the editorial board meeting of the Society and caused prolonged and emotional deliberations with the Board split between those favoring the publication and those opposed to it. For several months a decision could not be reached. For a time it was planned to open a new column in the Proceedings, entrust it to Professor E. G. Boring of Harvard, and have it printed there. But this plan was revoked and the decision was made, in order to safeguard the very existence of the Board, to delegate the decision on the article to three members of the society, not members of the Board. Their names were not disclosed but on January 20, 1964, Dr. George W. Corner, Executive Officer of the Society and the editor of the Proceedings, informed Dr. Hess that the decision had been made to reject the article.
Subsequently it was also rejected by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; in that magazine in April, 1964, an abusive article was published by a Mr. Howard Margolis, attacking Velikovsky and his work. The editor of the Bulletin, Dr. Eugene Rabinowitch, in a letter to Professor Alfred de Grazia, editor of the American Behavioral Scientist, offered Velikovsky an opportunity to reply with an article "not more abusive" than that of Margolis, or, instead, to have some of his views presented in the Bulletin by some scientist of repute. Then Professor H. H. Hess submitted the article " Venus - a Youthful Planet " to Dr. Rabinowitch.
The latter returned it with the statement that he did not read Velikovsky's book, nor the article. The case is described in The Velikovsky Affair (University Books), a collection of articles originally printed in the special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist (September 1963), then reprinted with updating material, as a book, in the summer of 1966.
[Ultimately, the article "Venus - a Youthful Planet" was published in the April, 1967 issue of the Yale Scientific Magazine . It is reprinted here with a marked timeliness. - LMG]