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David_Gerard comments on Helpless Individuals - Less Wrong
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This makes it extremely difficult to compare such numbers pre-20th Century (indeed, pre-1945) and after.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. You may not see any absolute decline if you simply count milestones or # of papers or something. You see the decline if you count milestones/breakthroughs per scientist, or something. Which is the question - are we seeing diminishing marginal returns? The data suggests yes. Then we can discuss why the diminishing returns. (Government poisoning academia? Low-hanging fruit exhausted?)
Or just a lot more people going into science than would have before, thus getting a lot of the less-brilliant in the job? That's the obvious one that springs to mind. Particularly post-1945, when the demonstration of the power of technical superiority in World War II and fighting the Cold War really opened the gushers of science funding.
That would be a variant on 'government poisoning academia', I suppose. Counter-arguments would be the Flynn effect (more brilliant people), increase in prestige of sciences versus humanities (bigger share of brilliant people), and existence of a decline prior to 1945.