At what Ages did Outstanding American Astronomers Publish Their Most-Cited Papers

Abstract

We selected 22 outstanding American astronomers whose careers terminated before 1970 and we counted the citations in 197() 79 to the papers published throughout their careers. It turns out that most (84%) of the citations are to papers published between the ages of 40 and 75 years. If we overcorrect for the fact that citations to outstanding papers decreased exponentially after a peak, the change is small: the years account for 77% of the citations and the years account for 94%. These results are not sensitive to the types of research done by these astronomers. Two likely reasons for the high citation rates in the later years are that astronomers tend to write reviews and do major studies in later years, both of which are highly cited. These results apply to outstanding normal astronomers and not necessarily to the rare revolutionary scientist.

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