The article is devoted to the study of the history of the development of one of the most authoritative magazines among the teachers of mathematics, high school students and mathematics and physics amateurs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – the magazine «Bulletin of Experimental Physics and Elementary Mathematics», published in Kyiv and Odesa. The purpose of the study is to determine the peculiarities of the selection of the authors and sources of biographical and prosopographical publications in the Bulletin during the entire period of its publication.

Scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, generalization and systematization were used to carry out a substantive analysis of the research subject. In the process of conducting a quantitative content analysis, text quantification, collection of empirical data, their generalization and mathematical and statistical processing were applied.

The study of the peculiarities of the selection of authors and sources of biographical and prosopographical publications in the Bulletin during the entire period of its publication makes it possible to formulate the following conclusions. Firstly, as a result of the careful work of the editors on the selection of the authors of biographical and prosopographical publications, we identified 5 main categories of the authors: a) members of the Bulletin's editorial staff; b) scientists-speakers of various types of meetings of foreign and domestic scientific organizations and societies; c) domestic public figures, professors and private assistant professors of universities; d) foreign researchers; e) members of the family of the scientists. Secondly, an important feature of the design of many biographical and prosopographical materials of the Bulletin was compliance with the editorial policy regarding detailed documentation of the sources of materials in page-by-page footnotes. Thirdly, the authors of the biographical and prosopographical articles used various sources to prepare materials: a) historiographical, biographical and prosopographical editions of foreign and domestic authors; b) materials of official foreign scientific publications; c) primary sources and family papers of publication subjects; d) scientific works of the subjects of the publications; e) narratives.

The selection of the authors of the publications, the balanced approach of the authors and editors to the selection of sources and their documentation ensured a high level of quality of the biographical and prosopographical materials of the Bulletin.

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