September 05, 2006

"Brownian Motors" by Peter Hänggi, Fabio Marchesoni, and Franco Nero (Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 14, No. 1-3, 51-70 (2005)) a remarkable success: 48 cites and in ISI "HOT Paper Section"

ISI Web of Knowledge / Web of Science by The Thomson Corporation has recently become a most useful tool to evaluate the impact of journals and individual researchers. Hence an obvious step is to re-consider also Annalen der Physik’s major contribution to the Einstein Year 2005, namely our Special Topic Issue 1-3 (vol. 14, 2005), in which eminent scientists in nine articles relate Einstein’s contributions to the forefront of today’s research. The papers in this special issue have been cited, on average, 6.78 times, which is a very good achievement – but it is even more remarkable that the article by Peter Hänggi (Augsburg), Fabio Marchesoni (Camerino), and Franco Nero (Saitama and Ann Arbor) is almost exclusively responsible for this result. Their review on "Brownian Motors" has received 48 (!) citations as of today (24 August 2006), and has been included in ISI’s "HOT Paper Section" (last two years, as of December 2005).

Even though Albert Einstein, in the view of the general public, is mostly associated with the Special and General Theory of Relativity, this clearly indicates that today’s research related to his contributions to Brownian motion (Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 17, 549 (2005); 19, 289 (1906); 19, 371 (1906)) is a most active field. The reason is simple: Brownian motion is not only of highest relevance in physics, but in other fields like biology and economics as well. In particular, in their review, Hänggi et al. describe systems possessing a spatial or dynamical symmetry breaking, in which "thermal Brownian motion combined with unbiased, non-equilibrium noise gives rise to a channeling of chance that can be used to exercise control over systems at the micro- and even on the nano-scale." Remarkable indeed!

September 05, 2006
"Brownian Motors" by Peter Hänggi, Fabio Marchesoni, and Franco Nero (Ann. Phys. (Leipzig) 14, No. 1-3, 51-70 (2005)) a remarkable success: 48 cites and in ISI "HOT Paper Section"