AR Celebrates Its 25th Birthday

This issue of the AR marks its 25th birthday. Future issues will include a new column, "25 Years Ago."

The forerunner of the AR was a series of "CAS Letters" from the president, which began in March 1970. The CAS office has eight of these, published up until August 1973. These were not numbered, so we do not actually know if we have a complete set. If any readers find old copies in their files, please contact Elizabeth Smith in the CAS office—maybe we can complete our collection!

These early letters from the presidents were intended to keep the members informed of CAS activities. In many ways, the news topics were no different than what is of interest now: exam structure, committee activities, relationships with other actuarial organizations, calls for papers, guides to professional conduct, and the like. In other ways, however, these newsletters illustrate the profound changes that have occurred over the last 25 years. Consider the following excerpt from a 1971 letter, which is noteworthy for its understated humor (was it intentional?) as well as its anachronistic message:

"There have been requests for special sessions for wives to explain technical actuarial subjects or the actuarial profession. Since there appears to be a somewhat limited interest in this subject, as President, I extended an invitation to interested wives to freely attend all sessions at the Spring Meeting."

The first issue of the Actuarial Review was published in February 1974. It boldly proclaimed: "This is the first issue of a quarterly publication of the Casualty Actuarial Society." Like the presidential newsletters that it replaced, it was typewritten rather than printed, and consisted of CAS and committee news items. It was called CAS Newsletter; the name Actuarial Review was not used until the second issue. But in addition to the news items it did contain three features that have been regular elements of the AR ever since.

It contained a message from the President, which we would recognize as the "From the President" column. It had a review of two papers, which we would now call the "Quarterly Review." And it ran a puzzle (What is the logic underlying the order of the series 8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 7, 6, 10, 3, 2?) which we would now put in the "It's a Puzzlement" column.

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