Thomson Reuters Predicts Nobel Laureates

With just two weeks until the recipients of some of the worlds most coveted research prizes are named, Thomson Reuters is releasing its picks for 2011 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates researchers likely to be in contention for Nobel honors. Each year, Thomson Reuters uses data from its research solution, Web of Knowledge™, to quantitatively determine the most influential researchers in the Nobel categories of Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics. Based on a thorough review of citations to their works, the company names these high-impact researchers as Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates and predicts them to be Nobel Prize winners, either this year or in the near future. Thomson Reuters is the only organization to use quantitative data to make annual predictions of Nobel Prize winners. Since 2002, 21 Citation Laureates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes. In the scientific community, citations, when analyzed and counted, can serve as another form of peer review, said David Pendlebury, Citation Analyst, Research Services, Thomson Reuters. "The more cited a scientist is, the more well-respected the author tends to be amongst his or her peers, which can be a predictor of awards like the Nobel Prize. Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates are chosen through a thoughtful assessment of citation counts and high-impact papers as well as consideration of discoveries or themes that the Nobel Committee may deem worthy of recognition. The Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates typically rank among the top one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of researchers in their fields, based on citations of their published papers over the last two or three decades. This year, 18 of the 24 Citation Laureates hail from American institutions; researchers from Austria, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan also appear among the 2011 picks. For detailed information about each of the Citation Laureates, including their areas of study, and to read about previously named Citation Laureates who are still in the running for a Nobel Prize, visit the Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates website at science.thomsonreuters.com/nobel/. Up to the minute news on all things Nobel is available by following @nobelcitings ( http://twitter.com/#!/nobelcitings ) on Twitter.com. Facebook users are also encouraged to submit their guesses for the 2011 Nobel Prize winners and contribute to general Nobel discussion on the Citation Laureates Facebook page, which replaces the previous Thomson Reuters online forum. The 2011 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates in Chemisty: 1. For the development and application of scanning electrochemical microscopy Allen J. Bard Hackerman-Welch Regents Chair in Chemistry and Director of the Center for Electrochemistry, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX, USA 2. For the invention and development of dendritic polymers Jean M. J. Fréchet Professor of Chemistry and of Chemical Engineering and Henry Rapoport Chair of Organic Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley CA USA, and Vice President of Research, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia -and- Donald A. Tomalia Distinguished Professor and Research Scientist, Department of Chemistry. and Director of the National Dendrimer and Nanotechnology Center, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI USA. Also, Chief Scientific Officer, Dendritic Nanotechnologies, Inc., Mount Pleasant, MI USA -and- Fritz Vögtle Emeritus Professor, Kekulé Institute for Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bonn (Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn), Bonn Germany 3. For pioneering simulations of the molecular dynamics of biomolecules: Martin Karplus Theodore William Richards Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA USA and Director, Laboratory of Biophysical Chemistry, ISIS, Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, France