Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Merrill-Palmer quarterly

The academic year 2004-2005 marks the 50th anniversary of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly: A Journal of Developmental Psychology. This occasion provides an opportunity to celebrate the journal's heritage, its long history of scholarly contributions to the human developmental sciences, and its current and future mission as a purveyor of scientific discoveries. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to announce this important milestone and to provide an overview of some of the journal's history, including the confluence of events, persons, institutional forces, and publication trends that brought about its creation and contributed to its longevity. The purview of this historical treatise is divided into four principal epochs: (1) the era preceding the inception of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly; (2) the establishment of the Merrill-Palmer Institute and founding of the Quarterly; (3) the 1950s through the 1990s, when the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly became a repository for scientific research; and (4) the post-millennial Quarterly.