Philip W. Goetz was the Executive Editor (under Chief Editor Warren E. Preece

Warren E. Preece

Warren Eversleigh Preece was editor of Encyclopædia Britannica from 1964 to 1975, during the development of "Britannica 3"...

) for the first version of the 15th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica

Encyclopædia Britannica

The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...

. More importantly, he was the Chief Editor for the second version of the 15th edition, which was a massive revision and re-organization of the Britannica.

Goetz, who obtained a B.S. from Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

 in 1950 and joined Britannica in 1952, served as Chief Editor from 1979 to 1991. He is given critical acclaim for making the second version a much more useful encyclopedia

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

, moving it away from the epistemological preconceptions

Propædia

The one-volume Propædia is the first of three parts of the 15th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, the other two being the 12-volume Micropædia and the 17-volume Macropædia. The Propædia is intended as a topical organization of the Britannica's contents, complementary to the alphabetical...

 of Mortimer J. Adler.