PART I. THE PROFESSIONAL ORIGINS OF SCIENTIFIC CO-AUTHORSHIP

From a historical and sociological perspective, this essay presents and develops the first comprehensive theory of scientific collaboration: collaborative Scientific research, formally acknowledged by co-authorships of scientific papers, originated, developed, and continues to be practiced as a response to the professionalization of science. Following an overview of the origins and early history of collaboration in the 17th and 18th centuries, a.study of the first professionalized scientific eommunity~ that of Napoleonic France, confirms that, as the theory predicts, collaboration is atypical research style associated with professionalization. In the early 19th century, virtually all joint research was performed by French scientists; collaborative research only appeared much later in England and Germany when they, too, underwent professionalization. That historical finding, which constitutes a puzzling anomaly for any other view of scientific teamwork, here conforms to theoretical expectation. Several other predictions of the theory are presented, to be taken up in subsequent studies.