Methodology
How the rankings are built
This page documents how the Top 100 list is constructed, what's in the data, and what's deliberately out.
Data sources
| Source | What it gives | Limitations |
|---|---|---|
| arXiv (math.NT, math.CO) | Preprint-level: titles, abstracts, authors, dates, co-author graph | Biased toward people who post preprints. Senior figures who publish only in journals are undercounted. |
| OpenAlex | Author-level: paper count, citations, affiliations, country | Concept tagging is noisy in math; surname-only matching can misidentify. |
| zbMATH Open | Curated math review database using MSC classes 11N05, 11N35, 11N36 | Coverage of older non-Western mathematicians is the best of the three sources. |
| Math Genealogy Project | Advisor-student trees | Dissertation-era affiliations only; gaps for some non-Western mathematicians. |
Pipeline
- arXiv pull: 17 search terms restricted to the math.NT and math.CO categories. Title-weighting: a match in the paper title counts at full weight, abstract-only at half.
- OpenAlex pull: phrase queries, author cap of 10 per work to remove physics megapapers. Title-weighting applied.
- zbMATH pull: documents tagged with the MSC classes 11N05, 11N35, 11N36.
- Merge and scoring: weighted order statistic with 70/20/10 on the best, middle, and worst of each researcher's three ranks. Lower combined score ranks higher.
- Estimating a missing rank: missing ranks are interpolated from the nearest ranked neighbours and shown in [square brackets].
What's not in this list
- Researchers without an OpenAlex profile. The list is biased toward digitally-indexed publication output.
- Subjective importance. We rank by output, not by depth.