The below mentioned article provides a note on history of Bergey’s manual.
The Society of American Bacteriologists presently known as the American Society of Microbiology began compiling the first edition of Bergey’s Manual by appointing an editorial board with Dr David Hendricks Bergey as its Chairman. The other members of the board were Francis C. Harrison, Robert S. Breed, Bernard W. Hammer and Frank M. Huntoon.
The Society of American Bacteriologists published the Journal of Bacteriology as a service to science. The first edition of Bergey’s Manual was published in 1923. The Board with some change in membership and Dr David H. Bergey continuing as chairman brought out a second edition of the manual in 1925 and a third edition in 1930.
Dr Bergey, while preparing the 4th edition in 1934, requested the Society of American Bacteriologists to make available the royalties received by the Society from the sale of the earlier editions, to meet the expenses of preparing the fourth edition for publication. Such provision was made by the Society, but the use of the Society’s financial machinery proved a burden to the Society as well as to the Editorial Board.
Consequently an agreement between the Society and Dr Bergey was made that the Society would transfer to Dr Bergey all its rights, title and interests in the manual and that Dr Bergey would in turn create an educational trust to which all the rights would be transferred.
Hence, Dr Bergey became the nominal owner of the manual. On January 2, 1936 he executed a Trust Indenture, designating Dr David H. Bergey, Robert S. Breed and E.G.D. Murray as the initial trustees, and transferred to the Trustees and their successors the ownership of the Manual, its copyrights and the rights to receive the income earned from its publications.
The trust is a non-profit organization. The trustees till now have published successively the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th editions of the Manual in 1934, 1939, 1948, 1957, 1974 and 1994 respectively. The Trust in 1977 also published an abbreviated version of the 8th edition entitled. ‘The Shorter Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology’.
The other publications of the Trust include ‘INDEX BERGEYANA’ published in 1966 and ‘SUPPLEMENT TO INDEX BERGEYANA’ published in 1981. The trust published the first edition of ‘Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology’ in four volumes. Volumes I and II were published in 1984 and 1986, respectively while volumes III and IV were both published in 1989. These volumes are considered to have much broader scope than the previous publications and were intended to act as an amplified source for revision of the Determinative Manual.
The trust promotes and supports various aspects of taxonomic research. It recognizes those individuals who have made outstanding contributions in the field of bacterial taxonomy through the Bergey Award, an effort jointly supported by funds from the Trust and M/S Williams & Wilkins who have been involved in the production of the Manual since its inception.