'Hobsbawm is also brilliant in connecting political developments to those in other domains, making small points of data into powerful observations. To mark the changes in science, he notes that the total number of German and British chemists in 1910 was 8,000. By the 1980s the number of people employed in scientific research surpassed five million.'
https://newrepublic.com/article/184512/eric-hobsbawms-lament-twentieth-century