ABSTRACT

Historians of contemporary science face a profound and unprecedented problem: the sheer volume of information and the difficulty of coping with the esoteric technicalities within each scientific specialization.1 Recent science is a huge and very diverse terrain. The number of practicing scientists is vast; the number of research fields is greater than at any previous time in history, and the number of potential sources for recent developments is enormous.2 For historians, the task is daunting.