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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!rutgers!princeton!allegra!alice!jbk
From: jbk@alice.UUCP
Newsgroups: sci.math,sci.research
Subject: Re: How many people read an average research paper?
Message-ID: <6370@alice.uUCp>
Date: Thu, 20-Nov-86 17:44:01 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.6370
Posted: Thu Nov 20 17:44:01 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Nov-86 23:48:43 EST
References: <7966@watdaisy.UUCP> <2483@phri.UUCP> <236@cartan.Berkeley.EDU>
Distribution: sci
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ
Lines: 40
Keywords: Science Citation Index
Summary: Kruskal is alive and well in Murray Hill
Xref: mnetor sci.math:228 sci.research:29



In article <236@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> 
larsen@brahms.berkeley.edu (Michael Larsen) writes:

>4.  A random search through the columns of CMCI turned up a 1964 paper by one
>J. B. Kruskal which has 116 citations.  It is quite possible that I am 
>merely exposing my ignorance, but I confess to having heard of neither
>the mathematician in question nor the work.

In article <2326@psuvax1.UUCP> berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) writes:

>I do not know the paper either, but the paper
>
> J.B. Kruskal, On the shortest spanning subtree of a graph and
>		the travelling salesman problem
>
>is cited by any textbook on data structure and algorithms.  
>In general, if someone has a very deep and difficult theorem which 'closes'
>certain topic, it will not be cited very much.  On the other hand, even
>a weak paper which 'opens' an area of research which becomes very popular,
>will be cited very often (often without reading, I guess, many times people
>cite citations of others).

To Michael Larsen: The 1964 paper you cite concerns non-metric multidimensional 
scaling.  This method has achieved routine use in psychology, marketing, and 
some other fields.  (And I haven't heard of you either, darling!)

To Piotr Berman: The 1956 "shortest spanning subtree" paper you cite was
written while I was a graduate student at Princeton, and was only my second 
published paper.  (May you write many papers as weakly popular as this one.)

A finitized form of a theorem from my Ph.D. thesis was the first proposition of
genuine mathematical interest to be demonstrated as undecidable in a formal
system (work by Harvey Friedman, using the first new method for demonstrating
undecidability since Goedel introduced the concept).

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Joseph B Kruskal