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THOMSON SCIENTIFIC PREDICTS NOBEL LAUREATES

Twenty-seven "Thomson Scientific Laureates" Recognized for Their Contributions to the Advancement of Science

 

Philadelphia, PA USA-London UK — September 5, 2006 — Thomson Scientific, part of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) and leading provider of information solutions to the worldwide research and business communities, today announced its 2006 Thomson Scientific Laureates — researchers likely to contend for Nobel honors — in anticipation of this year's Nobel Prize winners to be announced in October.

Each year, data from ISI Web of Knowledge^SM , a Thomson Scientific research solution, is used to quantitatively determine the most influential researchers in the Nobel categories of chemistry, economics, physiology or medicine, and physics. Because of the total citations to their works, these high-impact researchers are named Thomson Scientific Laureates and predicted to be Nobel Prize winners, either this year or in the near future. Of the 27 Thomson Scientific Laureates named since 2002, four have gone on to win Nobel honors—an accurate-prediction average of better than one in seven.

“Citations are an acknowledgement of intellectual debt—a direct demonstration of influence in a given subject area,” said Henry Small, chief scientist at Thomson Scientific. “Over the past 30 years, our studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between journal article citations and peer esteem. Researchers who have accumulated such credits from their peers are also often nominated for prizes and other honors, such as the Nobel Prize.”

Thomson Scientific is the only organization to use quantitative data to make annual predictions of Nobel Prize winners. The Thomson Scientific Laureates typically rank among the top one-tenth of one percent (0.1%) of researchers in their fields, based on citations of their published papers over the last two decades.

To select the 2006 Thomson Scientific Laureates, total citation counts and number of high-impact papers in the Nobel science fields were examined. These data were applied to categories within those scientific fields considered worthy of special recognition by the Nobel Committee: physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, and economics. Based on these criteria, possible winners—leaders within a particularly noteworthy area of study within each field—were selected.

The 2006 Thomson Scientific Laureates in four Nobel Prize categories are as follows:

Field	Researcher	Institution
Physics	Emmanuel Desurvire	Alcatel Technical Academy (France)
	Albert Fert	University of Paris-Sud (France)
	Peter Gruenberg	Julich Research Center (Germany)
	Alan H. Guth	Massachusetts Inst. Technology
	Andrei Linde	Stanford University School of Med.
	Masataka Nakazawa	Tohoku University (Japan)
	David N. Payne	University of Southampton (U.K.)
	Paul J. Steinhardt	Princeton University
Chemistry	Gerald R. Crabtree	Stanford University
	David A. Evans	Harvard University
	Steven V. Ley	University of Cambridge (U.K.)
	Tobin J. Marks	Northwestern University
	Stuart L. Schreiber	Harvard University
Physiology or Medicine	Mario R. Capecchi	University of Utah
	Pierre Chambon	Université Louis Pasteur (France)
	Sir Martin Evans	Cardiff University (U.K.)
	Ronald M. Evans	Salk Inst. For Biological Studies
	Elwood V. Jensen	Univ. of Cincinnati Medical Center
	Sir Alec J. Jefferys	University of Leicester (U.K.)
	Oliver Smithies	Univ. North Carolina School of Med.
Economics	Jagdish N. Bhagwati	Columbia University
	Avinash K. Dixit	Princeton University
	Oliver D. Hart	Harvard University
	Bengt R. Holmstrom	Massachusetts Inst. Technology
	Dale W. Jorgenson	Harvard University
	Paul Krugman	Princeton University
	Oliver E. Williamson	University of California, Berkeley

For detailed information about each of the Laureates, including information about their areas of study, visit the Thomson Scientific laureates Website at http://scientific.thomson.com/nobel . Visitors also may make their own Nobel Prize predictions, read about previously named laureates, and learn more about the Thomson Scientific selection process.

About The Thomson Corporation
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Thomson Scientific is a business of The Thomson Corporation. Its information solutions assist professionals at every stage of research and development—from discovery to analysis to product development and distribution. Thomson scientific information solutions can be found at www.scientific.thomson.com .