Editing
Cahn became editor of the new Journal of Nuclear Materials in 1959. He was offered the editorship of the first journal in the field, the Journal of Materials Science, in 1964 literally en route between Bangor and Sussex Universities. This was the start of a spectacular burgeoning of the scientific editing work that was to be the trademark of his later years. He says in his memoirs (3) that he regarded the years he devoted to creating this journal as the most important single editorial role he played. He later also acted as an editor of the Journal of Materials Research from 1985 and established a new journal, Intermetallics, in 1992.
In 1961 Cahn started editing the monumental work "Physical Metallurgy, first published in 1965. which went through four editions, the last two edited in collaboration with Peter Haasen of Göttingen. In 1986 Cahn, Haasen and Edward Kramer started work on a new series of multi-authored books, "Materials Science and Technology: A Comprehensive Treatment" which eventually contained 20 volumes, republished in 2005. Two further series of books on solid materials were edited, the Cambridge Solid State Science Series from 1992 and the Pergamon Materials Series from 1992 onwards. In 1998 he was one of six editors in chief for Elsevier’s 11-volume Encyclopedia of Materials series.
Cahn also wrote for a wider public. From 1967 until 2001 Cahn was Materials science correspondent for the news and comments section of Nature, the premier British science journal. Popular articles on a wide range of topics were assembled in a book Artifice and Artifacts published in 1992. In 2001 Cahn’s book The Coming of Materials Science outlined the development of the subject.
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