Peak achievement in the sciences isn’t measured by stopwatches or goals scored, it goes by citations – the number of times other scientists have referenced your findings in their own academic papers. A high number of citations is an indication that a particular work was influential in moving the field forward.
And the peak of this peak is the annual “Highly Cited Researchers” list produced each year by the folks at Clarivate, who run the Institute for Scientific Information. The names on this list are drawn from publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science™ citation index – the most-cited of the cited.
Duke has 38 names on the highly cited list this year — including Bob Lefkowitz twice because he’s just that good — and two colleagues at the Duke NUS Medical School in Singapore. In all, the 2021 list includes 6,602 researchers from more than 70 countries.
The ISI says that US scientists are a little less than 40 percent of the highly cited list this year – and dropping. Chinese researchers are gaining, having nearly doubled their presence on the roster in the last four years.
“The headline story is one of sizeable gains for Mainland China and a decline for the United States, particularly when you look at the trends over the last four years,” said a statement from David Pendlebury, Senior Citation Analyst at the Institute for Scientific Information. “(This reflects) a transformational rebalancing of scientific and scholarly contributions at the top level through the globalization of the research enterprise.”
Without further ado, let’s see who our champions are!
Biology and Biochemistry
Charles A. Gersbach
Robert J. Lefkowitz
Clinical Medicine
Pamela S. Douglas
Christopher Bull Granger
Adrian F. Hernandez
Manesh R.Patel
Eric D. Peterson
Cross-Field
Richard Becker
Antonio Bertoletti (NUS)
Yiran Chen
Stefano Curtarolo
Derek J. Hausenloy (NUS)
Ru-Rong Ji
Jie Liu
Jason W. Locasale
David B. Mitzi
Christopher B. Newgard
Ram Oren
David R. Smith
Heather M. Stapleton
Avner Vengosh
Mark R. Wiesner
Environment and Ecology
Emily S. Bernhardt
Geosciences
Drew T. Shindell
Immunology
Edward A. Miao
Microbiology
Barton F. Haynes
Neuroscience and Behavior
Quinn T. Ostrom
Pharmacology and Toxicology
Robert J. Lefkowitz
Plant and Animal Science
Xinnian Dong
Sheng Yang He
Philip N. Benfey
Psychiatry and Psychology
Avshalom Caspi
E. Jane Costello
Honalee Harrington
Renate M. Houts
Terrie E. Moffitt
Social Sciences
Michael J. Pencina
Bryce B. Reeve
John W. Williams
Post by Karl Bates