ABSTRACT
In 1958 I was elected a member of the Council of the Academy, the Academy’s governing body. In 1959, just before a meeting of the Council, the Academy president, Bronk, received news that Stanley was ill and wished to resign his position as chairman of the editorial board. The Council met, and Bronk liked to act promptly-he was not a man to put off until tomorrow what might be done today. He knew that the Proceedings carried a lot of math, so he looked about the table in that splendid boardroom, spotted the only mathematician there, and proposed to the Council that I be made chairman. Most likely, they did not know that I had been on the editorial board of the Transactions, which was the flagship journal of the American Mathematical Society. They probably appointed me because then, as now, the Council did not often disagree with the president.
