Winning a Nobel Prize is a great personal achievement. Some Nobel laureates may consider that their award is a certificate of competence in any field. This may prompt them to undertake projects or accept positions which are beyond their capabilities. Since Nobels are awarded when the laureates have usually passed their prime, caution should be exercised when these individuals are offered highly...

OBJECTIVE In a previous study of literary creative achievement, we presented evidence refuting the still-influential statistical studies of Frances Galton on the inheritance of genius and also described a family background constellation of creativity. This study aims to assess empirically the hereditary transmission hypothesis with respect to creative achievement in the natural sciences. METH...

In last year’s examination of the 1984 Nobel laureates in physics and chemistw, 1 I noted that Carlo Rubbia, Harvard University and the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland, and Simon van der Meer, also of CERN, received the physics prize barely two years after they identified the W and Z subatomic particles. This is one of the shortest intervals between discovery an...

Pulmonary complications often involve a modulation of innate immune responses [11–19] , and many studies have shown that surfactant proteins play a critical role in these processes [review in 20 ]. In this issue, Sylvia Ujma et al. [21] present an excellent review article, describing surfactant proteins A and B as being expressed also in many other parts of the body, such as the reproductive, u...

More than 800 million people suffer from hunger in the world. Using modern plant breeding methods to generate so-called GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), agricultural scientists have shown that crop yields and nutritional quality can be greatly improved. Many GMO varieties have been specifically developed with the aim of being resistant to pests, tolerant to drought and containing benefici...

The father of viral oncology, he discovered the first tumor virus and influenced many later scientists, including several Nobel laureates.

Contrary to what one might expect, Nobel laureates and Fields medalists have a rather large fraction (10% or more) of uncited publications. This is the case for (in total) 75 examined researchers from the fields of mathematics (Fields medalists), physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine (Nobel laureates). We study several indicators for these researchers, including the h-index, total numb...