At what institutions did Nobel laureates do their prize-winning work? An analysis of biographical information on Nobel laureates from 1994 to 2014

Scientometrics, Jul 2016

In this study we examined the institutions (and countries) the Nobel laureates of the three disciplines chemistry, physics and physiology/medicine were affiliated with (from 1994 to 2014) when they did the decisive research work. To be able to frame the results at that time point, we also looked at when the Nobel laureates obtained their Ph.D./M.D. and when they were awarded the Nobel Prize. We examined all 155 Nobel laureates of the last 21 years in physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine. Results showed that the USA dominated as a country. Statistical analysis also revealed that only three institutions can boast a larger number of Nobelists at all three time points examined: UC Berkeley, Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Researcher mobility analysis made clear that most of the Nobel laureates were mobile; either after having obtained their Ph.D./M.D. or after writing significant papers that were decisive for the Nobel Prize. Therefore, we distinguished different ways of mobility between countries and between institutions. In most cases, the researchers changed institutes/universities within one and the same country (in first position: the USA, followed, by far, by the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany).

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At what institutions did Nobel laureates do their prize-winning work? An analysis of biographical information on Nobel laureates from 1994 to 2014

R. (2008). Quantifying scholarly impact: IQp versus the Hirsch h. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology At what institutions did Nobel laureates do their prize- winning work? An analysis of biographical information on Nobel laureates from 1994 to 2014 Elisabeth Maria Schlagberger 0 Lutz Bornmann 0 Johann Bauer 0 Johann Bauer 0 0 University of California, Berkeley, USA AT&T, Bell Labs , Murray Hill, USA MIT, Cambridge, MA , USA Rockefeller University , New York , USA Harvard University , USA Univ. Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, USA Technion-Israel, Haifa , Israel Cornell University, Ithaka, USA Rice University Houston Kyoto University , Kyoto , Japan University of Colorado, Boulder, USA Yale University, USA University of Columbia, New York, USA Nagoya University , Nagoya , Japan California Institute of Technology (Caltech) , Pasadena , USA In this study we examined the institutions (and countries) the Nobel laureates of the three disciplines chemistry, physics and physiology/medicine were affiliated with (from 1994 to 2014) when they did the decisive research work. To be able to frame the results at that time point, we also looked at when the Nobel laureates obtained their Ph.D./M.D. and when they were awarded the Nobel Prize. We examined all 155 Nobel laureates of the last 21 years in physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine. Results showed that the USA dominated as a country. Statistical analysis also revealed that only three institutions can boast a larger number of Nobelists at all three time points examined: UC Berkeley, Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Researcher mobility analysis made clear that most of the Nobel laureates were mobile; either after having obtained their Ph.D./M.D. or after writing significant papers that were decisive for the Nobel Prize. Therefore, we distinguished different ways of mobility between countries and between institutions. In most cases, the researchers changed institutes/universities within one and the same country (in first position: the USA, followed, by far, by the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany). Nobel Prize; Affiliations - Researcher mobility Landmark papers Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Am Klopferspitz 18, 82152 Martinsried, Germany Division for Science and Innovation Studies, Administrative Headquarters of the Max Planck Society, Hofgartenstr. 8, 80539 Munich, Germany Introduction The Nobel Prize is the most prestigious and renowned research prize for outstanding contributions in physics, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, and it attracts widespread attention not only within but also outside the world of academia and science (www. nobelprize.org). Since research prizes in general (and the Nobel Prize specifically) can be used as indicators of research achievements, and as information on research prizes is usually well accessible, numerous scientometric studies investigating Nobel laureates have been conducted. For example, Zhou et al. (2014) examined 362 landmark papers written by Nobel laureates in physics from 1901 to 2012 using bibliometric methods (Journal Impact Factor, citations of landmark papers, country where the journal is published). In two recent studies, Chan et al. (2015a) and (b) looked at alterations of co-authors on the laureates? publications, and Wagner et al. (2015) compared Nobel laureates with a matched group of scientists to examine productivity, impact, and research networks. In further studies, publications by Nobel laureates have been used, for example, to validate (newly suggested) bibliometric indicators (Antonakis and Lalive 2008; Aziz and Rozing 2013; Rodr??guezNavarro 2011a, b), to test the quality of Google Scholar as a source for citation data (Harzing 2013; Patel et al. 2013), to predict the awarding of Nobel Prizes (Ashton and Oppenheim 1978), to study the uncitedness of publications by reputable scientists (Egghe et al. 2011; Heneberg 2013), to determine the effect of the Nobel Prize on the citation impact of publications by a Nobel laureate (Frandsen and Nicolaisen 2013; Gingras and Wallace 2010; Mazloumian et al. 2011), and to investigate the relationship between the number of highly-cited papers and the awarding of the Nobel Prize (Chuang and Ho 2014; Laband and Majumdar 2012). Previous studies not only examined Nobel Prizes and Nobel laureates using bibliometric methods, but also analyzed the event itself and the person as such from a sociology-ofscience perspective. Becattini et al. (2014) studied the time delay between when a scientist makes a prize-winning discovery and is recognized for it with the Nobel Prize. They found that from the very beginning of the Nobel Prize awards, this lag time has continuously increased and Nobel Prize winners have become proportionally older and older at the time of their awards. On average, the lag time is almost twice as long in chemistry (9 years) and physiology/medicine (11 years) tha (...truncated)


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Elisabeth Maria Schlagberger, Lutz Bornmann, Johann Bauer. At what institutions did Nobel laureates do their prize-winning work? An analysis of biographical information on Nobel laureates from 1994 to 2014, Scientometrics, 2016, pp. 723-767, Volume 109, Issue 2, DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-2059-2