600 Mining & Metallurgy researchers in the top 2% of the world's scientists

I have never been a great fan of ranking-lists, such as those comparing University departments around the world. Some are dubious to say the least, and are often biased.

Ranking individuals is usually subjective, but Stanford University in USA has provided a list of the Top 2% of Scientists in the world based on the number of citations of their research papers. This must have been a truly mammoth task, as there are around 160,000 scientists in the top 2%, representing all disciplines of science.

Although there is no human bias, such a list is also open to much scepticism. I have always tried to point out, for instance, that journals can only be judged on their impact factors by comparing like with like. Minerals Engineering, with a current impact factor of 3.795, is the leading journal in minerals processing and extractive metallurgy, but its impact factor cannot compare with a journal such as Nature Nanotechnology, which has an impact factor of 31.538. This is because minerals engineering is a relatively small field, so attracts far fewer citations than does Nature Nanotechnology, which publishes papers from a far great number of scientists, involved in what is one of the world's most intensively researched disciplines.  So it is not surprising that #1 in the list of Top Scientists is in the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Group, and #2 is from the intensively researched and cited area of Epidemiology.

Another reason to be careful of the listing is that you won't see any child prodigies in there, as scientists build up their list of citations over the years, and the vast majority of the top 2% are older scientists whose citation records began last century.

So bearing in mind its limitations, it is impressive that 600 scientists in the field of Mining & Metallurgy are included in the world's elite.

At #1 in Mining & Metallurgy is Dr. Paul Cleary, a very familiar face at MEI and other major conferences around the world. A Chief Research Scientist at Australia's CSIRO Data61, he is a world-renowned expert on particle based modelling for industrial, geophysical and biophysical applications, including simulation of rock and slurry flow in mills. We were very privileged, therefore, to have Paul present a keynote lecture "Recent developments and future of modelling in mineral processing using particle methods" at Computational Modelling '19 in Falmouth last year. And only this week Paul agreed to present a keynote lecture "Progress towards the Virtual Comminution Machine" at MEI's first online conference Comminution '21.

Paul with Barbara and me in Leeds, 2019

Paul with young researchers at Comminution '12 in Cape Town

Prof. Jannie van Deventer is #2 in our field. Jannie was one of the longest serving members of the Minerals Engineering Editorial Board until he retired from the board a few years ago to concentrate on his position as CEO of the Zeobond Group, Australia, specialising in geopolymer concrete.  Prior to that he was a professor at the University of Stellenbosch for over 14 years, before moving to Australia and the University of Melbourne for 25 years, as Professor of Mineral and Process Engineering and then Honorary Professorial Fellow.

He has been a familiar face at international mineral processing conferences, where he often had outspoken and sometimes highly controversial views, no more so than in his presentation at MEI's Precious Metals '12, on 'invisible gold' which is not detected by standard analytical techniques (posting of 12 August 2013). This led to perhaps the most debated paper ever published in Minerals Engineering, with some extremely strong views for and against his arguments.

Jannie van Deventer (2nd right) in Falmouth 2011, with Barbara and me, Mauricio and Ana Torem
and Dean Eastbury of Elsevier

Number 3 in the list is one of the 20th century's great mineral processors, Prof. Doug Fuerstenau of the University of California-Berkeley. Doug turned 92 years of age early this month, and I had the pleasure of interviewing him for MEI in 2015. He is the only person to hold the IMPC's top awards, the Lifetime Achievement and Distinguished Service Awards.

Prof. Fuerstenau in Denver 2019, with Prof. Jan Miller of the University of Utah,
also one of the elite scientists

I am pleased to see three of MEI's conference consultants are in the top 2% of world scientists. Prof. Markus Reuter is co-Director of the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology, Germany, and is a long time consultant for our sustainability conferences, including next year's Sustainable Minerals '21.

With Jens Gutzmer and Markus Reuter, co-directors of the HIF in 2019

Markus Reuter (centre) at SRCR'11, Falmouth with
Profs. Richard Williams and Jannie van Deventer

Prof. Sue Harrison, of the University of Cape Town, is also a long-serving MEI consultant, to our biotechnology conferences including next year's Biomining '21. She is pictured (left) below at Indaba '16 in Cape Town with me and her UCT colleague Prof. Dee Bradshaw. Dee was a long serving consultant to MEI on flotation. She sadly passed away in 2018, but it is good to see that she is in the list of the top 2% of the world's scientists. Dee and Sue are just two of the eight mineral processors from UCT's Chemical Engineering department who made it to the list (can any Institute better that?).

Two more of UCT's elite scientists are shown below, with Prof. Jim Finch of McGill University, Canada. On the left Prof. Cyril O'Connor, Chairman of the International Mineral Processing Council, congratulates Jim on organising a successful Congress in Quebec City in 2016. On the right our Flotation '13 consultant Prof. JP Franzidis, passes on the consultancy baton to Jim, who has worked with us for the past seven years, and will be our consultant and keynote speaker at Flotation '21. He was recently awarded the IMPC's Lifetime Achievement Award (posting of 26 November).

I am sorry that I cannot mention every one of the 600 minerals scientists on the list but if you would like to single out individuals of special merit, then I invite you to make use of the comments section on the blog. The more the better!

@barrywills