The rise and fall of a research field is the cumulative outcome of its
intrinsic scientific value and social coordination among scientists. The
structure of the social component is quantifiable by the social network of
researchers linked via co-authorship relations, which can be tracked through
digital records. Here, we use such co-authorship data in theoretical physics
and study their complete evolutionary trail since inception, with a particular
emphasis on the early transient stages. We find that the co-authorship networks
evolve through three common major processes in time: the nucleation of small
isolated components, the formation of a tree-like giant component through
cluster aggregation, and the entanglement of the network by large-scale loops.
The giant component is constantly changing yet robust upon link degradations,
forming the network's dynamic core. The observed patterns are successfully
reproducible through a new network model