In the years after World War II, the magazine fell into decline. In 1948, three partners who were planning on starting a new popular science magazine, to be called "The Sciences", purchased the assets of the old "Scientific American" instead and put its name on the designs they had created for their new magazine. Thus the partnerspublisher Gerard Piel, editor Dennis Flanagan, and general manager Donald H. Miller, Jr.essentially created a new magazine. Miller retired in 1979, Flanagan and Piel in 1984, when Gerard Piel's son Jonathan became president and editor; circulation had grown fifteen-fold since 1948. In 1986, it was sold to the Holtzbrinck group of Germany, which has owned it until the Springer-Nature merger.