Citation success for Imperial physicists

Two Professors' work is highlighted for having influenced many other researchers - News

By Danielle Reeves
Wednesday 22 August 2007

Two Imperial physics professors have successfully shown that their research is among the most influential in their fields, according to new data from Thomson's Essential Science Indicators.

The Indicators, which monitor how many times scientific papers are cited by other authors, have shown that Emeritus Professor Andre Balogh , from the College's space and atmospheric physics group is the world's fifth most cited scientist in the field of geosciences, over the last 10 years.

The same monitoring system has highlighted 'Controlling electromagnetic fields', a 2006 Science paper by Imperial's Professor Sir John Pendry , as a 'hot paper' which is in the top 0.01 per cent of highly cited papers from around the world in the last two months. This 'hot paper' is currently receiving a high level of attention from other academics, and as such may indicate an important new trend in research and scientific advance.

Professor Balogh's work focuses on studying the Earth's magnetosphere – the environment close to the Earth, just beyond the atmosphere, where the planet’s magnetic field affects the movement of particles and gases in space. His research career has seen him working closely with both the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA to build instrumentation for spacecraft to explore this area of space for over 40 years.

High profile projects with which Professor Balogh has been involved, contributing to his status as one of the most highly cited authors in this field in the last decade, include the ESA Cluster project. Successfully launched in 2000, Cluster consists of four spacecraft taking measurements in the magnetosphere, and has so far led to a much greater understanding of the boundary between the magnetosphere and the solar wind, and the movements and shape of the magnetosphere itself.

Commenting on his place in the Science Indicators ranking, Professor Balogh said: "I'm delighted to hear that my work has been so widely referenced by other academics in the last 10 years, it's a real testament to the value of the work my colleagues and I have been doing in this field since the 1960s. Understanding the role of magnetic fields in this region of space is one of the fundamental cornerstones needed when constructing any model of the space environment near Earth. This could explain why so many different scientists, probably from a diverse range of fields and disciplines, have used my group's papers in their own work over the last decade."

Professor Sir John Pendry's highly cited paper, 'Controlling electromagnetic fields' was published in Science in May 2006. It outlined the theoretical framework for an invisibility 'cloaking' device. Together with colleagues at Duke University in the US, Professor Pendry proposed to build a special material that wraps around an object and which would 'grab' light heading towards it and make it flow smoothly around the object rather than strike it. To an observer the light would appear to have behaved as if there was nothing there, rendering the object inside 'invisible'. Results published by the group in a subsequent Science paper in October 2006 showed that the team had successfully built a prototype 'cloaking device' which rendered an object placed inside it invisible to microwave beams.

Commenting on his work's selection as a 'hot paper', Professor Pendry said: "The paper creates the possibility of designing extraordinary new devices with applications in many different fields: new optical devices, shielding from electromagnetic radiation such as radar or mobile phone signals, and applications in medial imaging. Ultimately we want to control visible light but the short wavelength makes this a technological challenge for the moment."

Essential Science Indicators is a resource that enables researchers to conduct ongoing, quantitative analyses of research performance and track trends in science. Covering a multidisciplinary selection of 11,000+ journals from around the world, this in-depth analytical tool offers data for ranking scientists, institutions, countries, and journals.

This unique and comprehensive compilation of science performance statistics and science trends data is based on journal article publication counts and citation data from Thomson Scientific databases. Available as a ten-year rolling file, ESI covers 10 million articles in 22 specific fields of research, and is updated every two months.

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Professor Pendry talks about his 'hot paper' (RealPlayer)

Professor Balogh explains his work in space science (RealPlayer)

All video footage was taken by Imperial's Media Services team.