For physics, the first half of the twentieth century was a time of profound transformation, bringing about the transition from what we now call 'classical' to 'modern' physics. With the new concepts and fields of study there emerged a global physics community, an ever-growing network of collaboration and scientific exchange. Yves Gingras has analysed hundreds of thousands of scientific papers published between 1900 and 1945, and identified several trends that characterize this transformative period (Phys. Perspect. 12, 248–265; 2010).
Drude was indeed a central figure in the network of physicists of his time. According to the 'co-citation networks' constructed by Gingras, which capture how often a given author is cited with another, in the periods 1900–1904 and 1905–1910 Drude was one of the most centrally placed physicists, second only to J. J. Thomson (pictured here with Irving Langmuir, left, and William Coolidge, right). Thomson maintained his centre position until the mid-1920s, when others, including Arnold Sommerfeld, Werner Heisenberg, Arthur Compton and Hans Bethe, started to take over.
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