Although predictions for Nobel Prizes are difficult, the number of citations for scientific awards provides at least some indication. Every year, the Clarivate Data Group’s Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) uses publication and citation data from scientific articles to identify influential researchers in the areas of research in which the Nobel Prizes are awarded.
Quotes as a Forecasting Tool
Of the approximately 58 million articles recorded in the “Web of Science” since 1970, only about 8,700 or 0.015 percent have been cited 2,000 times or more. Its authors “represent a scientific elite whose influence is comparable to that of past and future Nobel Prize winners,” says Clarivate. They would therefore also be considered favorites for the Nobel Prize.
Since 2002, the group has selected 419 of these “Citation Laureates”, 71 of whom have already received the Nobel Prize. This year, 23 new favorites were chosen, including just two women. There are no Austrians on this list; in recent years, physician Gero Miesenböck and physicists Peter Zoller and Anton Zeilinger have been mentioned in this list. The latter received the Nobel Prize in Physics last year.
Medicine: cancer therapy, human ecosystem, sleep
Clarivate sees seven scientists as favorites for the Nobel Prize in Medicine: Carl H. June (University of Pennsylvania/USA), Steven A. Rosenberg (National Cancer Institute/USA) and Michel Sadelain (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center/USA) for more development of CAR T cell therapy, a cancer immunotherapy; Rob Knight (University of California San Diego/USA) for his research on the microbial ecosystems of the human body; Clifford B. Saper (Harvard Medical School/USA), Emmanuel Mignot (Stanford University/USA) and Masashi Yanagisawa (University of Tsukuba/Japan) for studies on the sleep-wake cycle and the discovery of orexin as an important sleep regulator.
Physics: Photonics, Entropy and Spintronics
In physics, two scientists are among the favorites: Federico Capasso (Harvard University/USA) for his research work in photonics, plasmonics and metasurfaces, as well as contributions to the invention and improvement of the quantum cascade laser; Sharon C. Glotzer (University of Michigan/USA) for demonstrating the role of entropy in the self-organization of matter; Stuart SP Parkin (Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics/Germany) for research in spintronics and in particular for the development of track memories to increase data storage density.
Chemistry: Various aspects of genetic research
There are seven favorites and one female favorite for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry: James J. Collins (MIT/USA), Michael Elowitz (Caltech/USA) and Stanislas Leibler (Rockefeller University/USA) for their work on synthetic genetic circuits that founded the field of synthetic biology; Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman (both University of Cambridge, UK) for co-inventing the next generation DNA sequencing method; Kazunori Kataoka (Kawasaki Institute of Industrial Promotion/Japan); Vladimir P. Torchilin (Northeastern University/USA) and Karen L. Wooley (Texas A&M University/USA) for developing innovative methods for drug delivery and genetic targeting.
Economy: Social mobility, city, inequality
According to Clarivate, there are five favorites for the economics prize: Raj Chetty (Harvard University, USA) for his work in understanding the factors that determine economic opportunities and identifying measures to improve social mobility; Edward L. Glaeser (Harvard University/USA) for analyzes and insights into the urban economy and the city as an engine of growth; Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman (both from the Paris School of Economics/France) and Emmanuel Saez (University of California at Berkeley/USA) for their research on income and wealth inequality and its consequences.