Emergence of New Quantitative Approaches to the History of Chemistry after 1950

This article discusses how quantitative approaches to the history of chemistry gradually emerged in the first three decades of the postwar era, within the broader context of quantitative social and economic history, historical sociology of science, and quantitative science indicators. I suggest that influential publications in the 1960s, postulating logistic curves in the exponential growth of science and the role of a broad scientific community in producing and distributing scientific knowledge, stimulated subsequent quantitative research in the history of chemistry. With mainframe computers presenting technical difficulties in the foundational period to the mid-1980s, initial quantitative research usually involved sets of non-computerised data cards developed ad hoc for specific projects - here exemplified by databases including German and British chemists. Shifting to computerised databases during the 1980s and 1990s, as they confronted increasingly large amounts of data. Fortunately, simultaneous technological improvements, leading to more powerful desktop computers and more user-friendly software, greatly facilitated this transition. Early computerised databases may have been neither designed for wider use online, nor mutually compatible; without external support, they might not survive the careers of their creators. Preserving, integrating, and broadening access to such valuable raw data remains a crucial challenge for future scholarship.