The 1990 Nobel Prize Winners
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Current CX3mrnerits” EUGENE GARFIELD INSTITUTE FCR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATGW 3YJ1 MARKET ST PHILAOELFHIA, PA 19104 The 199Q Nobel Prize Winners: A Citationist Retrospective Number 11 March 18, 1991 For more than a decade, we have devoted Before the awards were announced last essays to each year’s Nobel Prizes. These year, the biweekly newspaper ?% Scien- reports, usually published six months or tkt @ published a series of axticles in which more after the prize, have provided a unique Nobel Prize contenders were listed, based citationist perspective on the wimers. In ad- on citation frequency and predictor dition to identifying their most-cited works, awards.$7 One would think that with all of especially Citation Clussics ~, we have the non-Nobel awards that abound,g.g there highlighted work that has influenced key re- would be few recipients not in that category. search fronts.1 Nevertheless, this does occur km time to When pertinent, we’ve also listed the time. winners’ contributions to the review litera- One interesting aspect of this year’s ture. And+whe~ possible, we’ve contacted awards is the relatively low level of citations the Nobelists or close colleagues to de- for several of the winners. This could be due termine whether or not our data rein- to factors similar to those of the famous forced or contradicted perceptions of de- Watson and Crick paper in 1953,10 for layed recognition, as in the case with which they teceived the 1%2 Nobel Prize in Barbara Mc(lintock.z Her 1983 Nobel for physiology or medicine. It had been cited physiology or medicine may have been de- just under 1,100 times when we last studied layed, but she was widely recognized in the it.11This is an indication of obliteration by genetics community. In 1944, she was incorporation (a work so quickly becoming elected to the National Academy of Sci- a standard in its field that researchers feel ences. that it is unnecessary to cite the original ma- In the fmt issue of Current Contents o terial). In a sense, it is an honor to become (CC @’)this year, I announced hat our pub- oblitera@ as I noted in a previous essay.12 lication schedule for essays was changing to Even Tiw New York limes cbes not at- biweeldy.q Not only did this restructuring tempt to coverall the pri2es in one story, but reduce the space available for essays, it also perhaps the highlights of each recipient reduced the resources available to conduct called out below will prove interesting and extensive bibliographic research. So, in informative. keeping with this necessity, we have de- cided to provide only one or two brief ex- The Awards aminations of this year’s Nobel Prize win- ners, bearing in mind that access to the Officially, according to the will of Alfred Science Citafion hukx @, in print and elec- Nobel, prizes shall be awarded “...to those tronic formats, makes it convenient for read- who, during the preceding year, shall have ers to expand on our examinations, if they conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” are so inclined.4 Further. the monetarv awards are made from 41 the interest on the fund of his estate, appor- thesize complex molecules normally found tioned “...one part to the person who shall in nahsre--a system known as retrosynthe- have made the most important discovery or sis, where naturrd compounds are synthe- invention within the field of physics; one sized by fmt breaking them down into their part to the person who shall have made the basic parts rather than trying to build them most important chemical discovery or im- through trial and error. In addition to this, provemen~ one part to the prson who shall Corey developed computer modeling pro- have made the most important discovery grams to assist researchers in this process. within the domain of physiology or medi- A look at the citation record reveals that cine; one part to the person who shall have Corey was the 73d most-cited scientist for produced in the field of literature the most the years 1981-19887 and the most-cited outstanding work of an idealistic tendency; chemist during that period. Among his and one part to the person who shall have many papers, Corey’s most-cit~ “Pyridin- done the most or the best work for fraternity ium chlorochromate. An efficient reagent between nations, for the abolition or reduc- for oxidation of primary and secondary al- tion of standing armies and for the holding cohols to carbonyl Compounds,”ld has been and promotion of peace congresses.”lq cited more than 1,600 times since publica- In addition, there also is the Alfred Nobel tion in 1975. Memorial Prize in economic sciences, insti- In a recent phone conversation with CC, tuted by the Bank of Sweden at its tercente- Corey noted that impatartt works can often nary in 1968. This is subject to the same be underrated by citation counts, using hk judging conditions as the Nobel Prizes and 1953 paper, “Prediction of the stereochem- provides a monetruy award equal to the istry of ct-brominated ketosteroids,”ls as an other categories. example. This paper, presenting work in stereoelectronics that is widely used today, has been cited only 85 times, probably due chemistry to its publication in a smaller journal. He notes that the work would have received a much higher number of citations had he also Elias J. Corey, Harvard University, Cam- published the information in a review paper. bridge, Massachusetts, received the chemis- However, he does not otlen write review try award for developing new ways to syn- pa~rs. Among the many key items in his bibliog- raphy of more than 7(X)publications, Corey feels that his 1989 book, The Logic of Chernicaf Synthesis,16 will be one of his most important. He has received numerous predictor swamis, among them the American Chemic- al Society’s Award in Pure Chemistry, the Wolf Foundation Prize for Chemistry, and the National Medal of Science. His Nobel award was clearly brewing for some time. Physiology or Mdlcine The prize for physiology or medicine was Elias J. Corey,Chenrishy shared by two pioneers in the field of trans- 42 E. DormoUThomas,Physiologyor Medicine Joseph E. Murmy, Physiology orMedicine plant medicine-E. Donnall Thomas, Fred mic patients,”17was cited explicitly in more Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seat- than 250 papm since publication. Clearly, tle, Washington, and Joseph E. Murray, Har- the citation impact does not reflect the im- vard Medical School and Brigham and pact of his clinical findings. As a general Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. rule, clinical papers do not achieve citation Thomas is a member of the National Acad- frequencies equal to those in basic science. emy of Sciences and the recipient of, among Nevertheless, Murray’s citation history other laurels, the American Cancer Society’s shows that the sum of the citations to all of Award for Distinguished Service in Basic his papers is in excess of 1,600-an impres- Research, the Kettering Prize of the General sive total. Motors Cancer Resemch Foundation, the Thomas, on the other han~ was the 21st Robert Roesler de Villiers Award of the most-cited scientist for the period 1981 to Leukemia Society of AmeriW and the 1990 1988 and has been similarly ranked since Gairdner Foundation International Award. we began these studies more than 10 years For the layperson, the work of Thomas ago. As a matter of fact, his most-cited and Murray probably best illustrates paper, “Bone-mamow transplantation: Is Nobel’s desire that the awaml go to those the fn-st of a two-part review article, has who shall have “...conferred the greatest been cited in more than 1,280 papers since lmefit on mankind~ Naturally, it is impos- publication in 1975. sible to measure these benefiw easily. How- Thomas has been one of the most-cited ever, the work of these two laureates has authors for several decades. Had he received visibly benefited individurds, providing the 1990 Gairdner prima few weeks earlier, thousands with longer, more productive he certainly would have been included in lives. The Scientist’s list of “nominees.”7 Murray’s pioneering clinical work, includ- ing his 1954 transplant of a kidney between humans, opened the door to the seemingly Physics miraculous work that followed, including the work of Thomas on the transplantation The 1990 award for physics was shared of bone marrow. by Henry W. Kendrdl and Jerome L Fried- Murray’s most-cited 1957 article, “Pro- man, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, longed survival of skin homografts in ure- Cambridge, and Richard E. Taylor, Stanford 43 Henry !-VKendall,Physics JeromeI. Friedman, Physics Richwri E. Taylor Physics University, California. Their experiments the Nobel committee, which we might do confiied the existence of quarks (the sub- by reviewing our research-front database.zl atomic particles that make up protons and The names of these 1990 physics prizewin- neutrons). This experimental work built on ners would stand out in the high-energy the theories of Murray GeU-Marm (winner physics researeh front devoted to quarks. of the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics) and George Zweig, Cafifomia Institute of Tech- nology, Pasadena. Economics Their classic 1969 paper, “High-energy inelastic e-p scattering at 6“ and 1w,” 19has The 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in wo- been cited more than 265 times. In addition, nomic sciences was awarded to Harry E Taylor’s 1978 paper, “Parity non-conserva- Markowitz, City University of New YorlG tion in inelastic electron scattenng,”xo has New York, Merton Miller, University of been cited more than 420 times, making it Chicago, Illinois, and WiUiam F.