UW-Whitewater Professor's Research Cited in More than 10,000 Works
Citations by other researchers in the field demonstrate the value and importance of physicist’s studies of the Milky Way.
Professor Robert Benjamin (Physics) has reached a milestone like few others. His research on space has been cited by more than 10,000 other research works, according to Google Scholar. This means that other researchers are developing, building upon, critiquing or otherwise referencing the work of Professor Benjamin, according to Naomi Schemm, reference and instruction department chair in Andersen Library. Over 150 of Dr. Benjamin’s publications are listed on Google Scholar, most focusing on the interstellar matter between stars and the structure of the Milky Way.
“Google Scholar is the largest search engine of scholarly content that I know of,” says Schemm. It searches more content than any single library database.” Other databases have “cited by” functions but Google Scholar has the largest universe of known sources, including those in any language. According to Martha Stephenson, reference and instruction librarian, Benjamin’s work is regularly cited over 500 times per year since 2011, with one article alone cited over 1,300 times.
Dr. Benjamin was surprised to learn that his cumulative scientific work had accumulated so many citations. “I feel very lucky to have been part of a great group of researchers early on in my career that led to a lot of very influential papers, most of them using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope,” Benjamin shares. “I’ve enjoyed sharing my excitement about this work over the years with my students and colleagues.”
In addition to being cited by other researchers, Benjamin’s findings can be seen on the UW-Whitewater campus. “One fun thing for me is that data from this early research is etched in glass panels that wrap around the central Upham Hall elevators.”
Check out Dr. Benjamin’s citations on Google Scholar and take a look at the data the next time you visit Upham Hall. Congratulations, Professor Benjamin!