540 



AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



whom the first thousand are the material used 

 in this research. 



It should be distinctly noted that the fig- 

 ures give only what they profess to give, 

 namely, the resultant opinion of ten com- 

 petent judges! They show the reputation of 

 the men among experts, but not necessarily 

 their ability or performance. Constant errors, 

 euch as may arise from a man's being better 

 or less known than he deserves, are not elimi- 

 nated. There is, however, no other criterion 

 of a man's work than the estimation in which 

 it is held by those most competent to judge. 

 The posthumous reputation of a great man 

 may be more correct than contemporary opin- 

 ion, but very few of those in this list of scien- 

 tific men will be given posthumous considera- 

 tion. I am somewhat sceptical as to merit 

 not represented by performance, or as to per- 

 formance unrecognized by the best contem- 

 porary judgment. There are doubtless indi- 

 vidual exceptions, but, by and large, men do 

 what they are able to do and find their proper 

 level in the estimation of their colleagues. 



In order to obtain the 10 arrangements in 

 each science, or 120 in all, it was necessary 

 to ask the assistance of 192 scientific men. 

 Twenty-three of these did not reply to my 

 letter; 16 declined to make the arrangement, 

 usually on the ground that it was not feasible ; 

 23 consented, but afterwards gave it up or 

 did not send the slips in time, and 10 made 

 arrangements that could not be used, in most 

 cases because the names were arranged in 

 groups instead of being ordered serially. As 

 the arrangement resulted, those who made 

 it and those who were asked but failed were 

 distributed in the different hundreds of the 

 thousand, as shown in Table II. 



TABLE II. THE STANDING OF THOSE WHO MADE 



THE ABBANGEMENTS AND OF THOSE WHO 



WERE ASKED BUT FAILED 



Thus 76 of those who proved to be in the 

 first hundred men of science were asked to 

 make the arrangement and 47 of them did so. 

 Only twelve of those who made the arrange- 

 ment are not in the first five hundred. In 

 anthropology, for example, there are only 

 twenty representatives in the list, of whom 

 but two would probably be in the first hun- 

 dred, and of the twelve sciences there are only 

 three that would be expected to have more 

 than ten in the first hundred. It is, there- 

 fore, evident that the ten scientific men who 

 gave the judgments in each science are among 

 the leaders in that science. But their stand- 

 ing must of necessity vary with the different 

 sciences, one half of all the anthropologists 

 having made the arrangement and only two 

 thirty-fifths of all the chemists. 



Those asked to arrange the names were dis- 

 tributed among different institutions, as shown 

 in Table III. 



TABLE III. THE DISTBIBUTION AMONG INSTITUTIONS 



OF THOSE WHO WEBE ASKED TO MAKE 



THE ABBANGEMENTS 



Thus 23 scientific men connected with 

 Harvard University were requested to sort 

 out the slips; this was done by 7 of them. 

 Sixty-six and five tenths of the thousand, 



