Creative Class

Most scientists pursue “normal science,” but every so often a truly great breakthrough comes along that is truly revolutionary. So which universities are best at attracting the sorts of scientists who generate such breakthroughs?  According to research by Bruce Charlton on trends in Nobel prizes since 1946, American universities dominate as centers for revolutionary science. But within the US, advantage has shifted considerably over the past couple of  decades  (hat tip: Tyler Cowen).  And note how geographically concentrated or “spiky” revolutionary science is.

“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), 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 …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.  Harvard
is particularly interesting … Harvard has more than double the
number of citations of Stanford (which is second) …Harvard also tops the respected Shanghai Jiao Tong University
world rankings. 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.”

The full article is here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Universities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.