Via Fine Structure, The World’s Greatest Physicists (as Determined by the Wisdom of Crowds)
Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury at the University of California, Los Angeles, have come up with a way of ranking physicists by equating their achievements with their fame as measured by hits on Google.
We then conclude that if a string theorist is caught shagging a sheep – who (either one) has an accomplished publicist – he rises well above his confrere’s who are content to avail themselves of more exotic, less public modalities. That sounds about right.