Subfield · Astronomy and Astrophysics
Most cited papers in Astronomy and Astrophysics
What are the most cited papers in Astronomy and Astrophysics?
The most cited paper in Astronomy and Astrophysics is "The Tragedy of the Commons" (Garrett Hardin, 1968), with 23,379 citations. Next come "A smooth particle mesh Ewald method" (23,377) and "The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception" (23,143).
Showing 50 of 99 papers. Every paper with more than 4,300 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin · Science | 13 Dec 1968 | 23,379 |
| 2 | A smooth particle mesh Ewald method Ulrich Essmann, L. Perera, Max L. Berkowitz et al. · The Journal of Chemical Physics | 15 Nov 1995 | 23,377 |
| 3 | The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception Marc H. Bornstein, James J. Gibson · Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism | 1980 | 23,143 |
| 4 | Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant Adam G. Riess, A. V. Filippenko, P. Challis et al. · The Astronomical Journal | Sep 1998 | 19,814 |
| 5 | Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 High‐Redshift Supernovae S. Perlmutter et al. · The Astrophysical Journal | Jun 1999 | 18,225 |
| 6 | Maps of Dust Infrared Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Foregrounds David J. Schlegel, Douglas P. Finkbeiner, Marc Davis · The Astrophysical Journal | 20 Jun 1998 | 15,435 |
| 7 | Planck 2018 results N. Aghanim et al. · Astronomy and Astrophysics | 3 Apr 2020 | 14,737 |
| 8 | The large $N$ limit of superconformal field theories and supergravity JUAN M. MALDACENA · Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics | 1998 | 14,697 |
| 9 | Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger B. P. Abbott et al. · Physical Review Letters | 11 Feb 2016 | 14,545 |
| 10 | The composition of the Earth W. F. McDonough, Shen‐Su Sun · Chemical Geology | Mar 1995 | 13,976 |
| 11 | Anti de Sitter space and holography Edward H. Witten · Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics | 1998 | 13,441 |
| 12 | A safe operating space for humanity Johan Rockström et al. · Nature | 23 Sep 2009 | 13,302 |
| 13 | Particle creation by black holes Stephen William Hawking · Communications in Mathematical Physics | Aug 1975 | 13,167 |
| 14 | emcee : The MCMC Hammer Daniel Foreman-Mackey, David W. Hogg, Dustin Lang et al. · Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific | Mar 2013 | 12,323 |
| 15 | The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) Michael F. Skrutskie et al. · The Astronomical Journal | 24 Jan 2006 | 12,280 |
| 16 | Evolution of Protein Molecules Thomas H. Jukes, Charles R. Cantor · Elsevier eBooks | 1969 | 11,260 |
| 17 | First‐Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( WMAP ) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters David N. Spergel, Licia Verde, Hiranya V. Peiris et al. · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series | 19 Aug 2003 | 11,089 |
| 18 | Planck 2015 results Peter A. R. Ade et al. · Astronomy and Astrophysics | 20 Jun 2016 | 10,771 |
| 19 | Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003 Gustavo A. Bruzual, Stéphane Charlot · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | 22 Sep 2003 | 10,695 |
| 20 | The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary Donald G. York et al. · The Astronomical Journal | Sep 2000 | 10,547 |
| 21 | Abundances of the elements: Meteoritic and solar Edward Anders, N. Grevesse · Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta | 1989 | 10,547 |
| 22 | A perfectly matched layer for the absorption of electromagnetic waves Jean-Pierre Bérenger · Journal of Computational Physics | Oct 1994 | 10,127 |
| 23 | Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC S. Chatrchyan et al. · Physics Letters B | 17 Aug 2012 | 10,126 |
| 24 | Inflationary universe: A possible solution to the horizon and flatness problems Alan H. Guth · Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields | 15 Jan 1981 | 10,058 |
| 25 | A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering Julio F. Navarro, Carlos S. Frenk, Simon D. M. White · The Astrophysical Journal | Dec 1997 | 9,998 |
| 26 | GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral B. P. Abbott et al. · Physical Review Letters | 16 Oct 2017 | 9,794 |
| 27 | The Chemical Composition of the Sun M. Asplund, N. Grevesse, A. J. Sauval et al. · Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics | 20 Aug 2009 | 9,518 |
| 28 | Large Mass Hierarchy from a Small Extra Dimension Lisa Randall, Raman Sundrum · Physical Review Letters | 25 Oct 1999 | 9,373 |
| 29 | Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function Gilles Chabrier · Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific | Jul 2003 | 9,158 |
| 30 | SEVEN-YEARWILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE(WMAP) OBSERVATIONS: COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION Eiichiro Komatsu et al. · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series | 11 Jan 2011 | 8,892 |
| 31 | Gaia Data Release 2 A. G. A. Brown et al. · Astronomy and Astrophysics | 24 Apr 2018 | 8,734 |
| 32 | THE WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER (WISE): MISSION DESCRIPTION AND INITIAL ON-ORBIT PERFORMANCE EDWARD L. WRIGHT et al. · The Astronomical Journal | 9 Nov 2010 | 8,163 |
| 33 | A new type of isotropic cosmological models without singularity Alexei A. Starobinsky · Physics Letters B | Mar 1980 | 7,827 |
| 34 | MEASURING REDDENING WITH SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY STELLAR SPECTRA AND RECALIBRATING SFD Edward F. Schlafly, Douglas P. Finkbeiner · The Astrophysical Journal | 8 Aug 2011 | 7,745 |
| 35 | On the variation of the initial mass function Pavel Kroupa · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Apr 2001 | 7,639 |
| 36 | Black Holes and Entropy Jacob D. Bekenstein · Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields | 15 Apr 1973 | 7,550 |
| 37 | LOSS OF RECENT MEMORY AFTER BILATERAL HIPPOCAMPAL LESIONS William Beecher Scoville, Brenda Atkinson Milner · Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry | Feb 1957 | 7,447 |
| 38 | The cosmological constant problem Steven Weinberg · Reviews of Modern Physics | 1989 | 7,442 |
| 39 | Error and attack tolerance of complex networks Réka Albert, Hawoong Jeong, Albert-László Barabási · Nature | 27 Jul 2000 | 7,387 |
| 40 | An Alternative to Compactification Lisa Randall, Raman Sundrum · Physical Review Letters | 6 Dec 1999 | 7,311 |
| 41 | Smoothed particle hydrodynamics: theory and application to non-spherical stars R. A. Gingold, Joseph J. Monaghan · Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society | Dec 1977 | 7,263 |
| 42 | Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity Johan Rockström et al. · Ecology and Society | 2009 | 7,171 |
| 43 | The Gaia mission T. Prusti et al. · Astronomy and Astrophysics | 15 Sep 2016 | 7,118 |
| 44 | The Large-N Limit of Superconformal Field Theories and Supergravity Juan Maldacena · International Journal of Theoretical Physics | Apr 1999 | 6,784 |
| 45 | Magnitude and complex based diffusion signal reconstruction Marco Pizzolato, Ashis Ghosh, Timothé Boutelier et al. · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) | 18 Sep 2014 | 6,753 |
| 46 | Review of Particle Physics S. Eidelman et al. · Physics Letters B | 29 Jun 2004 | 6,725 |
| 47 | Three‐Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( WMAP ) Observations: Implications for Cosmology David N. Spergel et al. · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series | 31 May 2007 | 6,681 |
| 48 | CP-Violation in the Renormalizable Theory of Weak Interaction M. Kobayashi, Toshihide Maskawa · Progress of Theoretical Physics | Feb 1973 | 6,651 |
| 49 | STAR FORMATION IN GALAXIES ALONG THE HUBBLE SEQUENCE Robert C. Kennicutt · Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics | Sep 1998 | 6,628 |
| 50 | The hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter Nima Arkani–Hamed, Savas Dimopoulos, Gia Dvali · Physics Letters B | Jun 1998 | 6,617 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.