The Science of Science

In the late 1940s, while a new library was being built at the future National University of Singapore, a young mathematics instructor named Derek John de Solla Price stored the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in his bedroom. When he placed the archives, starting with the first volume from 1665, into chronological stacks by decade, he was struck by what he saw: The height of each stack increased exponentially. Presenting his findings at the 1950 International Congress of the History of Science, Price theorized the growth was a characteristic of science itself.