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Top 100 Papers in Physics Ranked
Rob Carr writes "What do physicists care about most? Who are the greatest minds of our time? What physics papers have had the greatest impact? Sidney Redner attempts to answer that question by looking at the citations of all journals in the Physical Review Journals since 1893. He ranked the top 100 papers based on their 'impact': the number of citations times the average age of the citations. Einstein's Relativity papers, which were not in Physical Review journals, are the most stunning absence. 'Fan Favorites' are there - Einstein does make the list for the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper. Feynman, Dirac, Bethe, Wheeler are on the list. Stephen Hawking does not make the list. Yet Nobel Prize winner Walter Kohn, who is virtually unknown to the general public, is an author on five of the 100 papers, including the top two and one of the top 15 'hot' papers. The paper goes into the statistics of the citations, a fascinating area in it's own right. Some papers make an immediate splash, while others might wait 50 years before their importance becomes apparent. The vast majority die a quick and quiet death. It's tempting to wonder if Redner's paper conclusively proves Sturgeon's Law."