Events at CERGE-EI

Presenter: Raman Dzimakou, a PhD student at CERGE-EI

Title: Scientists’ Productivity during a Scientific Revolution: Evidence from the Quantum Mechanics Revolution and Correspondence Networks, 1919 – 1932 

Abstract: What happens to scientific productivity when a discipline moves from Kuhnian normal science to revolutionary science? I study the 1925-1927 transition from classical physics to quantum mechanics. I reconstruct pre-1925 correspondence networks from physicists’ letters to reveal hidden "invisible colleges," or intellectual camps, around Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. Their first-neighbor circles overlap only modestly, with a Jaccard similarity of about 0.17. I use correspondence solely to classify scientists’ pre-revolution intellectual affiliations, not as evidence of a channel through which ideas diffused. Linking network membership to Web of Science publication and citation records, I use an event-study difference-in-differences design to compare productivity in Bohr’s circle, the treated group, with Einstein’s circle, the comparison group, before and after 1925. I reweight the Einstein group using propensity scores based on pre-1925 characteristics. After Heisenberg’s 1925 discovery of matrix mechanics, productivity in Einstein’s intellectual circle declines sharply and significantly on average, in both published articles and citations. This pattern suggests a transition toward the new quantum physics to which classically oriented physicists could not readily adapt, consistent with a Kuhnian paradigm shift and resistance to innovative ideas. To the best of my knowledge, the paper offers the first quantitative account of scientists’ productivity change during a Kuhnian transition from the normal to the revolutionary science.

Link to join online: : https://cerge-ei.webex.com/cerge-ei/j.php?MTID=me353828676f34b5095ab9e858a0ed333
Meeting number: 2742 828 7970
Meeting password: 222983