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Top Ten Lists
October 12, 2011
Practitioners of
LISP have a valid claim to priority when it comes to lists, but it's
David Letterman who enhanced their popularity in the form of the
Top Ten List. The archetypal top ten list in
materials science would likely be the
Mohs hardness scale, which I wrote about in a
previous article (Scratching Diamond, December 6, 2010).
Lists such as the Mohs hardness scale are easy to compile, since the ranking is by a quantitative property. Top ten lists of individuals are more difficult to compile, since they usually rely on qualitative measures of importance. When the ranking is for sports teams, or their players, things start to get really interesting, since the Internet is open to instant comment.
An assessment of the popularity of
physicists is possible through the use of "
Culturomics." The table below is a top ten list of physicists, which I reviewed in a
previous article (Physics Top Fifty, July 19, 2011). The popularity assessment is by milliDarwins, which is a measure of the mentions in all printed media normalized to those for
Darwin.[1-3]
The absence of
Isaac Newton from the top ten is a consequence of fewer mentions of him in recent years when the number of printed books and articles has increased. Newton did his work too long ago to have a popular impact today. Note that preeminent chemist, Linus Pauling, is considered to be a physicist for the purpose of this study.
This list can be justified in its reliance on the impartial measure offered by the milliDarwin concept, but when you're compiling a list of the "most important" events in a scientific field, things are more subjective.
In 2008, the editor of
Materials Today presented his a list of what he called
the top ten advances in materials science of the last fifty years. Here's the list, which I reviewed also in a
previous article (Materials Top Ten, January 21, 2008).
Items one and five are unusual, since they are "programmatic," and not technological. Their inclusion on the list shows the popular fixation on process, rather than discovery. Item eight should be revised to include
graphene as well as carbon nanotubes.
Quite a few years ago, I was asked to give a broad overview of my research to an audience of materials scientists. Since I was among friends, I decided to open with the Top Ten Reasons to Choose Materials Science as a Profession. In Letterman fashion, these were in reverse order of importance (10 to 1, instead of 1 to 10).
Here's another that I wrote on the occasion of a colleague's getting his advanced degree in physics, part time while he was still working. This achievement is a tour de force by any standard. The list is Top Ten Reasons Why (Name Withheld) Took so Many Years to Get His Degree."
References:
- John Bohannon, "The Science Hall of Fame," Science, vol. 331, no. 6014 (January 14, 2011), p. 143.
- John Bohannon, "The Science Hall of Fame (Interactive Dataset)," Science, vol. 331, no. 6014 (January 14, 2011), p. 143.3.
- Complete culturomic scientist dataset, 5387k CSV File. Release notes are here.
- The Mercury Men Trailer, YouTube Video.
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