Charles Kane, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the University of Pennsylvania ’s School of Arts & Sciences, is one of this year’s Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates. The honor is designed to recognize researchers whose body of work puts them in contention for a Nobel Prize.

Having accurately forecast 35 Nobel Prize winners since its inception in 2002, the annual Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates study mines scientific research citations to identify the most influential researchers in chemistry, physics, medicine and economics.

Thomson Reuters names multiple individuals or groups in each of these four categories each year. Kane, along with Laurens W. Molenkamp of the University of Würzburg in Germany and Shoucheng Zhang of Stanford University, are named in physics for their theoretical and experimental research on the quantum spin Hall effect and topological insulators.

This work introduced a new class of materials that are electrical insulators on their interior but conduct electricity on their surface.  Their special properties could be useful for applications ranging from low power electronics to creating a topological quantum computer.

Thomson Reuters, which publishes academic journals, also develops tools for analyzing the impact of the studies contained therein and in journals from other publishers, more than 12,000 titles in all. The influence of a scientific idea can be measured by the degree to which the relevant papers and researchers are cited in subsequent studies, among other criteria.

Because the Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Biology or Medicine and Economics are awarded to researchers who have had substantial impact on the direction of their field, citation rates are often good leading indicators of future winners.  

“As imitation is one of the most sincere forms of flattery, so too are scientific literature citations one of the greatest dividends of a researcher’s intellectual investment,” said Basil Moftah, president of Thomson Reuters IP & Science. “The aggregate of such citations points to individuals who have contributed the most impactful work and allows us to determine candidates likely to receive a Nobel Prize.”

Kane, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year, has been previously been awarded a five-year, $500,000 grant from the Simons Foundation, as part of its inaugural class of Simons Investigators. Similar to the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Grants,” the prize comes from the nonprofit with no strings attached. It is intended to enable the researchers to undertake long-term study of fundamental questions in theoretical fields.

He has also shared the 2012 Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society and the 2012 Dirac Medal from International Center for Theoretical Physics for his work on topological insulators.