Philip Ball

9.6k total citations · 2 hit papers
474 papers, 6.8k citations indexed

About

Philip Ball is a scholar working on Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biomedical Engineering and Materials Chemistry. According to data from OpenAlex, Philip Ball has authored 474 papers receiving a total of 6.8k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 48 papers in Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, 40 papers in Biomedical Engineering and 40 papers in Materials Chemistry. Recurrent topics in Philip Ball's work include Quantum Information and Cryptography (13 papers), Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture (12 papers) and Quantum Mechanics and Applications (12 papers). Philip Ball is often cited by papers focused on Quantum Information and Cryptography (13 papers), Quantum Computing Algorithms and Architecture (12 papers) and Quantum Mechanics and Applications (12 papers). Philip Ball collaborates with scholars based in United Kingdom, France and United States. Philip Ball's co-authors include Laura Garwin, John E. Hallsworth, Carmen Gaina, Laurent Gernigon, Gwenn Péron‐Pinvidic, Carlos A. Vargas, Luca Caracciolo, Andrew Stevenson, David J. Timson and Jonathan A. Cray and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Chemical Reviews and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In The Last Decade

Philip Ball

394 papers receiving 6.5k citations

Hit Papers

align trajectories

What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

Water as an Active Constituent in Cell Biology

2007 1.8k citations Philip Ball profile →
Water is an active matrix of life for cell and molecular biology

2017 327 citations Philip Ball profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name	h						Papers	Cites
Philip Ball United Kingdom	33	1.8k	1.6k	1.4k	1.0k	633	474	6.8k
David S. Moore United States	39	897 0.5×	1.8k 1.1×	878 0.6×	956 0.9×	1.1k 1.7×	182	8.4k
Osamu Takahashi Japan	39	1.8k 1.0×	1.2k 0.8×	766 0.5×	697 0.7×	886 1.4×	354	6.6k
Susan R. McKay United States	28	2.1k 1.2×	2.7k 1.7×	1.7k 1.2×	2.2k 2.1×	320 0.5×	87	13.7k
Eric J. Bylaska United States	35	2.4k 1.3×	2.2k 1.4×	672 0.5×	696 0.7×	772 1.2×	109	7.3k
Wolfgang Christian United States	23	1.4k 0.8×	2.1k 1.3×	666 0.5×	1.5k 1.5×	227 0.4×	78	7.1k
Robert W. Shaw United Kingdom	57	1.3k 0.7×	879 0.6×	1.3k 0.9×	364 0.4×	338 0.5×	347	12.3k
Jan Tobochnik United States	24	2.1k 1.2×	2.5k 1.6×	670 0.5×	1.5k 1.5×	250 0.4×	76	6.7k
Michael Hart United States	38	1.3k 0.7×	3.6k 2.3×	1.1k 0.7×	1.1k 1.1×	337 0.5×	204	9.5k
Peter V. Coveney United Kingdom	58	886 0.5×	3.4k 2.2×	2.7k 1.8×	1.5k 1.5×	331 0.5×	407	12.5k
Michael P. Allen United Kingdom	48	1.8k 1.0×	4.7k 3.0×	1.1k 0.7×	2.1k 2.0×	622 1.0×	204	11.3k

Countries citing papers authored by Philip Ball

Since Specialization

Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Philip Ball's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Philip Ball with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Philip Ball more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Philip Ball

Since Specialization

Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Philip Ball. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Philip Ball. The network helps show where Philip Ball may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Philip Ball

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Philip Ball. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Philip Ball based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Philip Ball. Philip Ball is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

Sort: Min cites: Since: Top N: Style:

20 of 20 papers shown

1.

Vargas, Carlos A., et al.. (2025). Evaluating and revealing statistical patterns and database performance in hydrogen exploration. Interpretation. 13(2). SA29–SA46. 1 indexed citations

2.

Decarlis, Alessandro, Meixia Geng, William Bosworth, et al.. (2024). Imaging Pleistocene volcanic edifices along the Egyptian Red Sea margin: Insights from reflection seismics and 3D constrained inversion of gravity and magnetic data. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. 448. 108038–108038. 5 indexed citations

3.

Ball, Philip. (2024). ‘Quantum plumbing’ at the nanoscale. Physics World. 37(5). 30–34.

4.

Ball, Philip. (2023). Beautiful Experiments. 1 indexed citations

5.

Ball, Philip. (2023). Soft learning. Nature Materials. 22(1). 2–2. 2 indexed citations

6.

Ball, Philip. (2023). When the roof falls in. Nature Materials. 22(10). 1162–1162. 2 indexed citations

7.

Vargas, Carlos A., Luca Caracciolo, & Philip Ball. (2022). Geothermal energy as a means to decarbonize the energy mix of megacities. Communications Earth & Environment. 3(1). 52 indexed citations

8.

Ball, Philip. (2020). When graphene goes strange. Nature Materials. 19(4). 368–368. 2 indexed citations

9.

Ball, Philip. (2020). China’s complex material footprint. Nature Materials. 19(2). 133–133. 4 indexed citations

10.

Peace, Alexander L., J. Kim Welford, Philip Ball, & M.F.R. Nirrengarten. (2019). Deformable plate tectonic models of the southern North Atlantic. Journal of Geodynamics. 128. 11–37. 43 indexed citations

11.

Ball, Philip. (2019). The benefits of disorder. Nature Materials. 18(10). 1040–1040. 1 indexed citations

12.

Ball, Philip. (2019). Magnetic molecules. Nature Materials. 19(1). 11–11. 2 indexed citations

13.

Ball, Philip, et al.. (2017). Passive Seismic Experiment to understand the basement and crustal structure, Northern Red Sea. EGUGA. 5986. 2 indexed citations

14.

Ball, Philip. (2015). CLIL, English teachers and the three dimensions of content. BioTechniques. 24(2). 15–19.

15.

Ball, Philip. (2010). Histoire vivante des couleurs : 5000 ans de peinture racontée par les pigments. 2 indexed citations

16.

Ball, Philip. (2008). Water as a Biomolecule. ChemPhysChem. 9(18). 2677–2685. 96 indexed citations

17.

Ball, Philip & Mario Ruben. (2004). Color Theory in Science and Art: Ostwald and the Bauhaus. Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 43(37). 4842–4847. 16 indexed citations

18.

Ball, Philip, et al.. (2003). news and views in brief. Nature. 423(6938). 395. 12 indexed citations

19.

Ball, Philip. (2002). Colore : una biografia. Rizzoli eBooks. 3 indexed citations

20.

Ball, Philip, et al.. (1998). The self-made tapestry (book review). Nature. 396(6713). 1. 5 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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