The Science Hall of Fame

John Bohannon

Welcome to the Science Hall of Fame (SHoF), a pantheon of the most famous scientists of the past 2 centuries. Unlike traditional halls of fame, this one does not rely on the subjective judgment of a small committee of experts. Instead, it uses an objective and literal measure of fame: the appearance of people's names in books over the centuries. Until now, most rigorous metrics of scientific impact have relied on citations: the number of peer-reviewed articles a scientist has written, the "impact factor" of the journals in which they were published, and how many times other scientists have cited those articles. But that measures only scientists' impact on their peers. This is a new way to measure a scientist's influence. It captures fame on the grandest scale, weighing the cultural footprint of scientists across societies and throughout history./.../