The idea is Planck’s. In his Scientific Autobiography (German 1948, English 1949) he wrote that a new scientific truth wins “because its opponents eventually die.” The short “funeral by funeral” form traces to economist Paul A. Samuelson in 1975, per Quote Investigator ↗. “One funeral at a time” is a still later paraphrase that appears in none of Planck’s writings.
“Science advances one funeral at a time” a popular paraphrase, not Max Planck’s words. Planck’s idea appears in A Scientific Autobiography (tr. Frank Gaynor, 1949): “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.”
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Provenance
What Planck actually wrote
Work
A Scientific Autobiography (in Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers), pp. 33–34
Translation
Frank Gaynor, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949
German original
Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1948), p. 22; the same idea appeared earlier in Die Naturwissenschaften, 30 October 1946
Popular wording
Not in Planck’s text: a later paraphrase
This experience gave me also an opportunity to learn a fact—a remarkable one, in my opinion: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Gaynor translation, 1949
This is Planck’s own statement in English, as transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗. Neither “funeral” nor “one funeral at a time” appears in it.
1946: Planck states the idea in German in “Persönliche Erinnerungen aus alten Zeiten,” Die Naturwissenschaften. He writes that a new truth prevails because its opponents gradually die out (“die Gegner allmählich aussterben”), as documented by Quote Investigator ↗.
1948 / 1949: The passage appears in Planck’s posthumous Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie (Leipzig, 1948, p. 22), then in Frank Gaynor’s English translation (1949, pp. 33–34). Wikiquote’s sourced section gives both citations: Wikiquote ↗.
1975: Paul A. Samuelson writes in Newsweek that, as Planck said, “science makes progress funeral by funeral.” Quote Investigator concludes Samuelson should be credited with the concise form: Quote Investigator ↗.
Later: “Science advances one funeral at a time” circulates as a paraphrase. Wikiquote lists it among “Paraphrased variants” under Planck’s real passage: Wikiquote ↗.
The popular wording is an anonymous paraphrase with no identifiable first publication, so no copyright status is asserted for it. Planck’s own sentence in English comes from Frank Gaynor’s translation, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (Philosophical Library, 1949). A translation published in 1931 or later should be treated as still in copyright.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
Who gets the credit, and why
The line packs a real Planck idea into a slogan he never used. Different writers have been credited with the short form.
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The exact wordingMax Planck Idea yes, words no
Planck wrote that new truths win “because its opponents eventually die,” not that science advances by funerals. Quote Investigator calls his phrasing “not compact” and credits him with “the longer statement and the underlying idea”: Quote Investigator ↗.
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“Funeral by funeral”Paul A. Samuelson Likely coiner of the short form
Samuelson used “funeral by funeral” in Newsweek (1975), his textbook Economics (1976) and Economica (1977). He gave the credit away to Planck, to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm, and in 1994 to “some sage.” Quote Investigator still credits him with the concise phrasing: Quote Investigator ↗.
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“Science advances, funeral by funeral”Henri Poincaré Misattribution
In 1979 the sociologist Joseph Harry credited the saying to Poincaré. Quote Investigator records this as a stray attribution and gives no evidence that Poincaré said it: Quote Investigator ↗.
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Popularizer of Planck’s sentenceThomas S. Kuhn
Kuhn quoted Planck’s Gaynor-translated sentence in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). That helped the idea spread, and Samuelson later linked the saying to Kuhn’s paradigm. Kuhn himself did not coin it: Quote Investigator ↗.
✓The thought is Max Planck’s (1946; Scientific Autobiography, 1949). The “funeral by funeral” wording points to Paul Samuelson in 1975. “One funeral at a time” is a later paraphrase found in none of Planck’s works: Quote Investigator ↗.
Context
Why the line stuck
Planck’s remark, often called “Planck’s principle,” is a bleak view of how science changes. Evidence alone rarely converts established experts; new ideas win as a generation raised on them takes over. Thomas Kuhn quoted it in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), which helped make it a standard reference in debates about how science works (Quote Investigator ↗).
The slogan form is now familiar enough to serve as a research title. In 2019 economists Pierre Azoulay, Christian Fons-Rosen and Joshua Graff Zivin published “Does Science Advance One Funeral at a Time?” in the American Economic Review. They studied what happens to a research field after a star scientist dies (AEA ↗).
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents…
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1858–1947 · German theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1918
Max Planck (23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was the German physicist whose work on radiation founded quantum theory. He won the 1918 Nobel Prize in Physics. His posthumous Scientific Autobiography contains his observation that new scientific truths win out as their opponents die. The modern “one funeral at a time” slogan compresses that observation.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Planck’s actual words
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, trans. Frank Gaynor (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), 33–34; originally Wissenschaftliche Selbstbiographie (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1948), 22. The wording “Science advances one funeral at a time” is a later paraphrase; see Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Science Makes Progress Funeral by Funeral,” September 25, 2017.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Science advances one funeral at a time’?” Last verified 2 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/science-advances-one-funeral-at-a-time/