image: Books are an important part of our cultural genome, the information that we pass on from generation to generation. "Culturomics" studies the evolution of human culture quantitatively, in this instance by using books as a 'fossil record' of previous generations. Here we show the usage frequency of "Marc Chagall" in German (red) as compared to English (blue). Chagall, a Jewish artist censored by the Nazi regime, disappears from the German corpus during the Third Reich (red highlight) even as his fame continues to rise elsewhere. This image relates to an article that appeared in the Dec. 16, 2010, issue of Science Express, published by AAAS. The study, by Dr. Jean-Baptiste Michel at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and colleagues was titled, "Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books." view more
Credit: Image courtesy of <i>Science</i>/AAAS