A computational study on the fame of great minds in physics

• In Event: Critical Data Studies: Ethics and Human Contexts of Data Science II

Abstract

Books are the stepping stones to human progress. The current study utilizes both Google Books, which covers 36 million global digital books, and Google Scholar, which indexes 91 million academic items, to examine the scientific fame of top physicists. Such a large collection is undoubtedly a rich archive of human history and civilization. Although some pioneers have utilized the Google Books corpus and conduct text-based statistical analysis to trace cultural trends, books have not captured sufficient attention in quantitative research evaluation.

We particularly focus on and compare two of the greatest physicists, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, depicting their fame evolution over centuries and exploring what they are famous for. We reveal that the great minds are gone but not forgotten. Early scientists are still on the public’s lips in modern society. Their scientific impacts on human history have persisted for centuries. The computational analysis confirms that the influence of Albert Einstein is highly relevant to his two contributions on general relativity and quantum theory, while the most frequently mentioned scientific achievements of Isaac Newton are the law of universal gravitation and the laws of motion. We also explore their most accredited achievements based on co-word analysis. We find evidence in support of own-group fame preference, i.e., that the scientists have greater reputations in their home countries or among scholars sharing the same languages. We argue that when applied appropriately, scientific fame can serve as an altmetric indicator to gauge the influence of scientists beyond academia.

Authors

• Guoyan Wang, University of science and technology of China

• Tang Li, Fudan University