W. H. Freeman
W. H. Freeman is an American science publisher founded in 1946 in San Francisco, a Scientific American subsidiary from 1964 and now an imprint of Macmillan Learning.
- Editions tracked
- 30
- First editions
- 25
- Books
- 28
- Years
- 1959 to 2018
About W. H. Freeman
W. H. Freeman and Company is an American publisher of science textbooks, founded in 1946 by William H. Freeman Jr., who had been a salesman and editor at Macmillan, and based in San Francisco in its early decades. One of its first major books was Linus Pauling's General Chemistry (San Francisco, 1947), illustrated by Roger Hayward, which reached a second edition in 1953.
In March 1964 Freeman merged with Scientific American, Inc., becoming a wholly owned subsidiary that kept its name, its San Francisco base at 660 Market Street, its staff and its own publishing policies; the two firms had already been issuing Scientific American offprints together for about three years. Later Freeman titles include James Watson's Recombinant DNA (1983), William J. Kaufmann III's The Universe (1985) and Peter Atkins' Physical Chemistry. Holtzbrinck, which bought Scientific American in 1986, counts Freeman among its scientific publishing acquisitions.
Freeman became part of Macmillan Higher Education alongside Bedford/St. Martin's and Worth Publishers. From 1 January 2016 that division was merged with Macmillan New Ventures to form Macmillan Learning, where W. H. Freeman continues as an imprint within the Holtzbrinck-owned Macmillan group.
We have not yet written the guide to W. H. Freeman's first-edition conventions. Until we do, check each book's own page: we list its points where we know them. Know how W. H. Freeman marked its firsts? Tell us.
Published by W. H. Freeman
Frequently asked questions
How many W. H. Freeman books does MyVolumes track?
We track 30 editions published by W. H. Freeman, 25 of them first editions, across 28 books.
Where these facts come from
- W. H. Freeman and Company, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Linus Pauling Papers, Series 5 catalogue (General Chemistry), Oregon State University Special Collections & Archives Research Center (scarc.library.oregonstate.edu)
- Letter from Stanley Schaefer, W. H. Freeman and Company, to Joshua Lederberg, National Library of Medicine Digital Collections, 1964 (digirepo.nlm.nih.gov)
- Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, Reference for Business (referenceforbusiness.com)
- Macmillan Combines Education, New Ventures Groups into Macmillan Learning, Publishers Weekly, 2015 (publishersweekly.com)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 18 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.