Scientometric identification of elite ‘revolutionary science’ research institutions by analysis of trends in Nobel prizes 1947–2006
Bruce G. Charlton
Medical Hypotheses. 2007; 68: 931-934
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Summary
Most research is ‘normal science’ using Thomas Kuhn’s term: checking, trial-and-error improvement and incremental extrapolation of already existing paradigms. By contrast, ‘revolutionary science’ changes the fundamental structures of science by making new theories, discoveries or technologies. Science Nobel prizes (in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine and Economics) have the potential to be used as a new metric for measuring revolutionary science. Nobel laureates’ nations and research institutions were measured between 1947 and 2006 in 20 year segments. The minimum threshold for inclusion was 3 Nobel prizes. Credit was allocated to each laureate’s institution and nation of residence at the time of award. Over 60 years, the USA has 19 institutions which won three-plus Nobel prizes in 20 years, the UK has 4, France has 2 and Sweden and USSR 1 each. Four US institutions won 3 or more prizes in all 20 year segments: Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and CalTech. The most successful institution in the past 20 years was MIT, with 11 prizes followed by Stanford (9), Columbia and Chicago (7). But the Western United States has recently become the world dominant region for revolutionary science, generating a new generation of elite public universities: University of Colorado at Boulder; University of Washington at Seattle; and the University of California institutions of Santa Barbara, Irvine, UCSF, and UCLA; also the Fred Hutchinson CRC in Seattle. Since 1986 the USA has 16 institutions which have won 3 plus prizes, but elsewhere in the world only the College de France has achieved this. In the UK Cambridge University, Cambridge MRC unit, Oxford and Imperial College have declined from 17 prizes in 1967–86 to only 3 since then. Harvard has also declined as a revolutionary science university from being the top Nobel-prize-winning institution for 40 years, to currently joint sixth position. Although Nobel science prizes are sporadically won by numerous nations and institutions, it seems that long term national strength in revolutionary science is mainly a result of sustaining and newly-generating multi-Nobel-winning research centres. At present these elite institutions are found almost exclusively in the USA. The USA is apparently the only nation with a research system that nurtures revolutionary science on a large scale.
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Most of scientific production can be categorized as ‘normal science’ using Thomas Kuhn’s term to describe research which constitutes the checking, trial-and-error improvement and incremental extrapolation of already existing paradigms [1]. Normal science can be measured and analyzed using standard scientometric research outputs such as number and share of publications and citations [2]. But a different method is need to detect and measure the much rarer, but potentially more-important, examples of paradigm-transforming Kuhnian ‘revolutionary science’ [3].
Revolutionary science changes the fundamental structures of a whole science (as achieved by Einstein, Newton or Darwin) or, more often, a significant sub-speciality of a major science [1]. For example science can be transformed or re-directed by new theories, discoveries or major technologies. Revolutionary science is therefore the cutting-edge which allows each science to continue to grow in rapid bursts, and to become qualitatively more accurate and useful in its predictions [3] and [4].
The problem of discriminating between revolutionary and normal science has become more difficult since the advent of Big Science [5]. Big Science comprises quasi-industrial forms of research organization. It arose initially in physics and chemistry but now characterizes biomedical research, which is currently the dominant world science. Big Science is almost inevitably a type of normal science (since it needs to be predictable) and tends to be ‘applied’ in its aims, and similar to industrial Research and Development in its methods [4] and [6]. Normal science now overwhelms revolutionary science in terms of quantity, so that revolutionary science has become almost invisible when research production is measured using standard scientometrics.
Science Nobel prizes have the potential to be used in detecting and measuring revolutionary science [3] and [7]. This may allow identification of those nations and institutions where revolutionary science has happened in the past, and help understand the conditions which could encourage revolutionary science in the future.
Nobel prizes as a measure of revolutionary science
The award of a Nobel prize in one of the four recognized sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Physiology/Medicine and Economics) seems to be the best current evidence of a significant achievement in revolutionary science. Although the small annual number of Nobel prize-winners (laureates) means that many significant achievements go unrecognized [7], nonetheless the perceived validity of these awards is high within the scientific community, and only a small proportion of awards are regarded as controversial or unjustified.
The number of science Nobel laureates in a nation and a research institution were measured between 1947 and 2006 in three 20 year segments of 1947–66, 1967–86 and 1987–2006 [8]. A maximum of three people can receive each prize, so there are a minimum of four and a maximum of 12 laureates per year (since 1969, when the economics prize was first awarded. Up to 1968 there were a minimum of three and a maximum of nine laureates).
A very large number of nations and institutions have won a single Nobel prize, but my interest was in those places which had won multiple prizes as evidence that they provided an environment conducive to revolutionary science. I set the threshold at three Nobel prizes during a 20 year period as the minimum number of laureates which counts as a significant national or institutional contribution to revolutionary science. (However, in 1965 the prize for Physiology/Medicine went to Jacob, Monod and Lwoff of the Pasteur Institute, Paris, France; who all researched the same general topic.)
Official statistics are only available on Nobel laureates’ institutional affiliation at the time they receive the prize [8]. Clearly, this is not as valid a measure of revolutionary science as knowing laureates’ affiliations at the time prize-winning work was actually accomplished; however such information is not readily available. I therefore allocated credit to each laureate’s institution and nation of residence at the time they received their award.
By contrast with the general decline elsewhere in the world, the US system is increasingly successful in generating revolutionary science which leads to the award of a Nobel prize (Table 1). It can be seen that few countries have any research institutions which have earned three or more Nobel prizes over any of the defined 20 year time spans. Over 60 years, the USA has 19 such institutions (Table 2), the UK has four, France has two, and Sweden and USSR one each (Table 3).
Table 1.
Number of Nobel laureates by Nation – 20 year segments from 1947 to 2006
Nation 1947–66 1967–86 1987–2006
USA 50 88 126
UK 20 25 9
Germany 8 7 9
USSR/Russia 7 2 2
France 4 3 5
Switzerland 3 7 7
Sweden 3 7 1
Japan 2 1 3
A minimum of three prizes in one time segment is required for inclusion.
Table 2.
Number of United States Nobel laureates by institution – 20 year segments from 1947 to 2006
Institution 1947–66 1967–86 1987–2006
USA
Harvard University 9 13 5
University of California Berkeley 7 3 4
Stanford University 4 5 9
CalTech 4 4 5
Columbia University 4 1 7
Rockefeller Institute & University 3 6 3
Chicago University 2 4 7
Princeton University 1 2 6
MIT 1 5 11
Cornell University 1 4 2
UCLA 1 0 3
Yale University 0 4 1
NIH – National Institute Health 0 4 0
University of Colorado, Boulder 0 0 4
University of Washington, Seattle 0 0 3
Fred Hutchinson CRC, Seattle 0 0 3
University of California, Santa Barbara 0 0 3
UCSF (U Cal San Fransico) 0 0 3
University of California, Irvine 0 0 3
A minimum of three prizes in one time segment is required for inclusion.
Table 3.
Number of Non-US Nobel laureates by Institution – 20 year segments from 1947 to 2006
Institution 1947–66 1967–86 1987–2006
University Cambridge, UK 3 7 2
MRC Cambridge, UK 3 3 1
University Oxford, UK 3 3 0
Imperial Coll. London, UK 0 4 0
Pasteur Inst, Paris, France 3 0 0
College de France, Paris 0 0 3
PN Lebedez Institute, Moscow, USSR 5 0 0
Karolinska Inst., Sweden 0 4 0
CERN (multi-national) 0 3 1
A minimum of three prizes in one time segment is required for inclusion.
Table 2 shows that there are only four institutions which have won three or more Nobel prizes in all three 20 year periods, all from the USA – Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley and CalTech. The most successful institution in the past 20 years was MIT, with 11 prizes followed by Stanford (9), Chicago and Columbia (7). But the Western United States has become the world dominant region for revolutionary science – with Stanford, Berkeley and CalTech now being amplified by a new generation of elite public universities: University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Washington at Seattle, University of California at Santa Barbara, UCSF (University of California at San Fransisco), University of California at Irvine, UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) – also the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center at Seattle.
In the past 20 years, the USA has 16 institutions which have won three or more prizes, but elsewhere in the world (Table 3) only the College de France has achieved three Nobel prizes. Since 1986 the previously Nobel-successful UK research institutions (University of Cambridge, the MRC Molecular Biology Unit at Cambridge, University of Oxford and Imperial College, London) have declined from seventeen prizes 67–86 to only three.
The USA demonstrates dynamic changes in ranking over the 60 year period (Table 2). New institutions have risen to prominence in the Western states. From one prize each in 1947–66, MIT and Princeton have both overtaken Harvard to become first and fifth among Nobel prize-winners. Columbia declined in the middle period, but recovered strongly to reach equal-third in the rankings. The NIH and Yale have significantly declined during the most recent 20 years. Such variation in rankings is probably indicative of a high level of competition between revolutionary research institutions.
Harvard is particularly interesting. In terms of conventional scientometric research measures, Harvard is currently by-far the top ranking university in the world. For example, Harvard has more than double the number of citations of Stanford (which is second) and about 65 percent more publications than UCLA (which is second) during 2000–2004 [9]. And Harvard has more elected Members of the US National Academy of Sciences than any other university (167 – Harvard; 129 – Berkeley; 128 – Stanford; 100 – MIT; 72 – Princeton; 71 – Cal Tech [10]). By a large margin, Harvard also tops the respected Shanghai Jiao Tong University world rankings [11].
Yet there are signs of a decline in revolutionary science at Harvard. From 47–86 Harvard was the top Nobel-prize-winning institution, but for the past 20 years it has been overtaken in prize numbers by MIT (11), Stanford (9), Columbia (7), Chicago (7) and Princeton (6) – all of which are considerably smaller. The implication may be that Harvard is evolving towards being a ‘normal science’ university – albeit unusually large and successful.
Conclusion
If this statistic of Nobel prizes is a valid measure of revolutionary science, then the main conclusion is that the USA has emerged to become the only nation that supports revolutionary science on a large scale. It seems that long-term strength in revolutionary science is mainly a product of a nation possessing numerous elite research institutions where revolutionary science thrives. A nation lacking such institutions will win relatively few Nobel prizes, and prizes will be spread around many institutions (e.g. in Germany, the various Max Planck research institutions sometimes win a single Nobel prize, but no specific institute has ever won two prizes in 20 years).
Over the past 60 years, the UK has declined from being the only non-US focus of revolutionary science, to joining Switzerland and Germany (with nine prizes) as the kind of place where normal science has been thriving but revolutionary science is thinly-distributed and sporadic in occurrence. Presumably, recent US improvement has therefore been driven mainly by within-nation competition.
In contrast to the picture of long term decline in Nobel-prize-winning revolutionary science; UK and European scientific production (also that of Chinese science) is probably catching up with the USA in terms of scientometric measures such as numbers of publications and citations [12] and [13]. This difference between national performance in normal and revolutionary science seems to suggest that the research systems of revolutionary science and normal science are evolving towards separation [3]. Clearly, growth of the two types of science does not always go-together.
In future, it would probably be beneficial if this increasing separation between revolutionary and normal science were made explicit, with institutional self-definition and specialization, and differentiated funding streams and evaluation criteria for the small number of elite revolutionary science institutions [4]. Part of this process would be the development of a distinctive set of scientometric measures for revolutionary science. Counting Nobel laureates could be a first step in this direction.
Acknowledgement
Thanks are due to Peter Andras, Andrew Oswald and Malcolm Young for comments and advice.
References
[1] T.S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions, Chicago Univesrity Press, Chicago (1970).
[2] E. Garfield, Essays of an information scientist, ISI Press, Philadelphia (1977).
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[4] B.G. Charlton and P. Andras, The future of ‘pure’ medical science: the need for a new specialist professional research system, Med Hypotheses 65 (2005), pp. 419–425. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (98 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[5] Solla D.J. Price de, Little science, big science and beyond, Columbia Univesrity Press, New York (1986).
[6] J. Ziman, Real science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK) (2000).
[7] Charlton BG. Why there should be more science Nobel prizes and laureates – and why proportionate credit should be awarded to institutions. Medical Hypotheses [in press].
[8] Nobel Foundation. Nobel prizes.
[9] Charlton B, Andras P. Oxford University’s research performance (four articles published in Oxford Magazine during 2006).
[10] National Academy of Sciences. Members.
[11] Shanghai Jiao Tong University: Institute of Higher Education. Academic Ranking of World Universities 2006.
[12] R.D. Shelton and G.M. Holdridge, The EU–US race for leadership of science and technology: qualitative and quantitative indicators, Scientometrics 60 (2004), pp. 353–363. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus
[13] Z. Ping and L. Leydesdorff, The emergence of China as a leading nation in science, Res Policy 35 (2006), pp. 83–104.
