Disclaimer:
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I am asking this question as an improvement to [this question](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/27881/who-is-the-last-mathematician-that-understood-all-of-mathematics), which should be community wiki. This is in line with the actions taken by Andy Putman in a similar case (cf. [meta](http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/399/i-hope-that-people-will-do-this-in-the-future/)).


See the relevant [meta thread](http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/439/who-is-the-last-mathematician-that-understood-all-of-mathematics/) about the previous question. 


Edit: If it wasn't already obvious, I only asked this question to prevent the other one (which was not made community wiki) from being reopened. 


Question:
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The scope of mathematics has grown immensely since ancient times. At what point in time did it become impossible for a single person to understand the majority of mathematics enough to keep current with contemporary research? 


Edit: Clarified the wording.



At what point in history did it become impossible for a person to understand most of mathematics?
The world's output of scientific papers increased exponentially from 1700 to 1950. 


One online source is [this article](http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html) (which is concerned with what has happened since then). The author displays a graph (whose source is a 1961 book entitled "Science since Babylon" by Derek da Solla Price) showing exponential increase in the cumulative number of scientific journals founded; an increase by a factor of 10 every 50 years or so, with around 10 journals recorded in 1750.


Perhaps someone can locate similar statistics specific to mathematics, but it's reasonable to expect the same pattern. If so, it is a long time since any individual could follow the primary mathematical literature in anything close to its entirety. 


But then, gobbling papers is not how leading mathematicians (or scientists) actually operate. 


By making judicious choices of what to pursue when, and with sufficient brilliance and vision, it is possible even today to make decisive contributions to many fields. Serre has done so in, and between, algebraic topology, complex analytic geometry, algebraic geometry, commutative algebra and group theory, and continues to do so in algebraic number theory/representation theory/modular forms.


