The Royal Society recently provided access to an archive of papers published in the scientific academy's prestigious journal. Some 25 thousand scholarly works date from 1665 to the present day. Many notable scientific advancements are included in the archive, including, for example, Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA. This interesting data set was ripe for some visual tinkering. The database I used was put together by Brian Amento and Mike Yang of AT&T Labs.
The Author Distribution visualization displays papers chronologically. Paper titles radiate downward from the vertical midpoint at a 45 degree angle. Within a single year, papers are sorted alphabetically. The year a volume was published is shown, centered among it's respective block of papers. The size varies linearly by the number of number of papers published during that year's volume. Authors are shown radiating upwards from the vertical midpoint at a 45 degree angle. Their positions are computed by calculating the average position of the papers they authored. The size of the author's name reflects how prolific they were (linear relationship). Essentially, author names are "centered" above the time period they were active.
It's really interesting to explore these images! For example, the first section (1665-1710) has Edmond Halley (of Halley Comet fame), Isaac Newton, Antony van Leeuwenhoek (inventor of the microscope) and other famous scholars.
The Word Distribution visualization has the same visual characteristics as the author distribution (above). However, instead of authors, this visualization explores the distribution of words in publication titles. Word size is determined with a square root function, which helps dampen extremely common words (i.e. 'the' and 'of'). Only words used three or more times are shown. It's interesting to see how words evolve and fields like photography and electronics emerge.
