The journal was conceived by Charles Dodds (the founding editor-in-chief), Frank Young, Alan Parkes, and Solly Zuckerman in 1937.

The first issue was published in 1939 (it took two years to process the papers from draft manuscript to print) and contained 45 research articles.

Consequently, in 2011 it was decided by the Publications Committee of the Society for Endocrinology that the two journals would have a single joint editorial board.

While papers would still be submitted to one or the other of the journals, the senior editors would have the opportunity to suggest that manuscripts be transferred between publications.

From October 2004, the online offering was extended to include the HTML full text version of articles.