Fig. 2: Scientific prizes and extraordinary growth.

Panels a through f show the differences in growth rates of prizewinning and matched topics for 10 years prior to and 10 years after the prize year in relation to a productivity, b citation, c topic’s lead scientist impact, d #incumbent scientists, e #entrants, and f #disciplinary stars. Statistically significant growth differentials between prizewinning (gold line) and matched topics (flat black line) begin shortly after the prize (vertical line) and continue yearly following the prize (95% CIs shown as dashed lines). At 10 years, the growth rates of prizewinning topics exceed matched topics by 25–55% depending on the growth variable (two-tailed t-test, p < 0.001. p-value ranges from 0 to \({1.56\times 10}^{-139}\)). Prizewinning and non-prizewinning matched topic groups had not growth differences for 10 years prior to the prize (two-tailed t-test, p > 0.05 for all 6 × 11 = 66 tests, p-values range from 0.1438 to 0.9310).