Science-specialty literatures their legendary contemporary polarity, based on the transmission of information between generations.

Each of fifteen scientific specialty fields was represented by a journal and the percent of "legendary" papers (those with at least one reference twenty-five or more years old) was calculated for each field. Non-legendary papers were designated as "contemporary". A historical divergence was uncovered when the highly legendary field, physiology, was compared with the highly contemporary field, microbiology, both fields being moderately contemporary in 1922. The legendary contemporary field characteristics of a field are useful for estimating libraries' requirements for back holdings and for appraising literature searches.