Scientific elite revisited: patterns of productivity, collaboration, authorship and impact.

ABSTRACT: Throughout history, a relatively small number of individuals have made a profound and lasting impact on science and society. Despite long-standing, multi-disciplinary interests in understanding careers of elite scientists, there have been limited attempts for a quantitative, career-level analysis. Here, we leverage a comprehensive dataset we assembled, allowing us to trace the entire career histories of nearly all Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine over the past century. We find that, although Nobel laureates were energetic producers from the outset, producing works that garner unusually high impact, their careers before winning the prize follow relatively similar patterns to those of ordinary scientists, being characterized by hot streaks and increasing reli

SUBMITTER: Li J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7211484 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature