The 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate Analytics includes Perimeter Institute’s Director Robert Myers and Associate Faculty member Will Percival, who is also a faculty member and director of the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Waterloo.

The list recognizes pioneers who have published multiple papers that rank among the top one percent of most-cited papers in their fields over the last decade, according to the Web of Science, a large database of reputable journals.

In scientific papers, citations give credit to the results and ideas of other scientists. Citations are thus an important measure of scientific impact, showing how a researcher’s work influences the ideas and research of other scientists.

According to Clarivate, “Of the world’s scientists and social scientists, Highly Cited Researchers truly are one in 1,000.”

This is the fifth time since 2014 that Myers has been on the list. Percival has also been named to the list during four previous years.

Myers, one of Perimeter’s founding faculty members and Director since 2019, has made major contributions in a broad range of areas, from gravitational physics and black holes to foundational quantum field theory and string theory. He has been particularly focused on quantum entanglement and spacetime and is part of the multi-institutional “It from Qubit” research program, funded by the Simons Foundation. Several of his discoveries, such as the "Holographic C theorem,” the “Myers effect,” and “linear dilaton cosmology” seeded new lines of research.

His 230 papers have been cited more than 30,000 times, according to the INSPIRE database.

Percival, an astrophysicist, is a lead scientist for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), an international collaboration that last year released a comprehensive analysis of the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created. His 262 papers have been cited more than 40,000 times, according to the INSPIRE database.