Chemist among world's most influential scientific authors
Chemist among world's most influential scientific authors
A University of Delaware researcher is ranked second in the world in citations among chemists, according to a new Institute for Scientific Information web site dedicated to the world's most cited and influential scientific authors.
Arnold L. Rheingold, chemistry and biochemistry, has published 728 papers and amassed 8,598 citations from 1991 to 2000, based on the results of his research, according to ISI, which has headquarters in Philadelphia and analyzes citations as a way to measure objectively the impact scientists have in their respective fields.
The most-cited chemist was George M. Whitesides of Harvard University, and the top five also include Shu Kobayashi of the University of Tokyo, Axel D. Becke of Queens University and J. Fraser Stoddart of UCLA.
Rheingold is an inorganic chemist who has increasingly focused on X-ray crystallography, a characterization of the solid state by using X-ray diffraction to study the structure of matter.
Recently voted chair-elect of the American Chemical Society's inorganic chemistry division, Rheingold said he is "very proud" of the ISI honor, noting "it is generally accepted that the measure of the importance of a paper is the number of times colleagues cite it when writing their own papers.
"I have had an enormously productive group of dedicated and hard-working graduate and postdoctoral students who have gotten the job done with great competence and in a way that has made the lab a very exciting place to be," he said.
In addition to working with a strong team at UD, Rheingold said the number of citations is attributed in part to the importance of high-quality crystallographic work because crystallography is now all but mandatory when publishing work about new compounds in chemistry's most important journals, especially those published by the American Chemical Society, generally considered the best in the world.
"That we can provide a quality of work that meets the standards of these journals means that our work is seen by a larger audience, giving us a real boost in getting it cited by others," he said.
Rheingold said the differences in the properties of compounds–from strong acids to gentle perfumes, from toxic gases to highly therapeutic pharmaceuticals– depend on the arrangement of atoms in specific orders and geometrical relationships. X-ray crystallography remains the only way these atomic arrangements can be determined without ambiguity.
"That is why more than 50 research groups worldwide collaborate with us in their efforts to characterize new compounds they have synthesized, from Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the University of Washington and Stanford," he said. "We also make an effort to assist productive researchers at small colleges in our region, where research support may be minimal but faculty and student enthusiasm is high.
"With something new every day, even after having done thousands of structures, the goosebumps never end," Rheingold said. "In fact, given the great improvement in the quality of data we are producing today compared to even a few years ago, we are capable of seeing many things more clearly and understanding the solid state in wonderful new ways. I can't imagine not doing this; it's just too much fun."
ISI's new web service–ISIHighly Cited.com–brings together the publication and achievement records of preeminent researchers. Approximately 19 million articles or source records were identified and evaluated to determine the most highly cited researchers in their respective disciplines.
The researchers selected for ISIHighlyCited.com comprise less than one-half of 1 percent of the almost 5 million researchers in the ISI Citation Database from 1981-1999.
Researchers are selected for inclusion based on the total number of citations received by their articles within a given category–a quantifiable demonstration of their impact or influence. Since new material is published daily and citation counts are adjusted at the same time, ISI will regularly expand the list of highly cited researchers as new leaders emerge.
