The AIP in 1978

A single event just before the start of 1978—the date was 30 November 1977—made this year begin with a challenge. It came from a proposal of the US Internal Revenue Service to remove the tax‐exempt status of AIP on the grounds that the Institute's operations are mainly of benefit to the private interests of its Member Societies, rather than its chartered purpose of “advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics…” Such a change in tax status, if left unchallenged, would have had disastrous effects on the journals that are at the very heart of the dissemination of scientific information and of the very purpose of AIP.