Identification of Successful Mentoring Communities using Network-based Analysis of Mentor-Mentee Relationships across Nobel Laureates

Abstract

Skills underlying scientific innovation and discovery generally develop within an academic community, often beginning with a graduate mentors laboratory. In this paper, a network analysis of doctoral student-dissertation advisor relationships in The Academic Tree is used to identify successful mentoring communities in high-level science, as measured by number of Nobel laureates within the community. Nobel laureates form a distinct group in the network with greater numbers of Nobel laureate ancestors, descendants, mentees/grandmentees, and local academic family. Subnetworks composed entirely of Nobel laureates extend across as many as four generations. Successful historical mentoring communities were identified centering around Cambridge University in the latter 19th century and Columbia University in the early 20th century. The current practice of building web-based academic networks, extended to include a wider variety of measures of academic success, would allow for the identification of modern successful scientific communities and should be promoted.