Brief Historical Overview
On May 20, 1899, 36 physicists gathered to establish the American Physical Society at Columbia University, in the City of New York. These 36 decided that the mission of the APS would be "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics". In the beginning the dissemination of physics knowledge took place only through quarterly scientific meetings. In 1913, the APS took over the operation of Physical Review, already in existence since 1893. Hence, journal publication also became an important goal, second only to its original mission. Physical Review was followed by Reviews of Modern Physics in 1929, and by Physical Review Letters in 1958. Volume 1, Issue 1 was published on July 1, 1958 (See archives link). As the years passed the fields of physics have multiplied, and the number of submissions has grown. Consequently, Physical Review has been subdivided into five separate sections, which are distinct from Physical Review Letters.
Read more about this topic: Physical Review Letters
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“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)