[psuter]

Conference organizers are well aware that best paper awards are not perfect predictors of importance or popularity. Many top conferences specifically introduced separate awards ("most influential", "test of time", etc.) granted e.g. 10 years after publication.

[not_that_noob]

Often times, the truly revolutionary ideas (and most likely to be cited in future papers) are those that are not understood fully or perhaps even reviled, and thus likely to not be awarded any significant honor on introduction.

Einstien won his Nobel for work on the photoelectric effect, not relativity, though obviously the latter mattered more.

[privong]

> Einstien won his Nobel for work on the photoelectric effect, not relativity, though obviously the latter mattered more.

The photoelectric effect led to quantum mechanics and the associated science and technology. I don't think it's obvious that relativity mattered more. If you judge by day-to-day use, one could plausibly argue that our understanding of quantum mechanics has a bigger impact.

[ep103]

My high school science teacher told us that he was given the prize for the photoelectric effect because that was a well understood mechanism by the time of the awarding. It was generally understood that relativity was going to be a bigger deal (concept wise), but since it was still so hotly debated / not yet thoroughly accepted, the commission wanted to ensure that he was given a prize before death (the award is not given post-humorously for some reason) and given for something that wouldn't be later rejected.

[Retric]

"In 1905 Albert Einstein published a paper that explained experimental data from the photoelectric effect as being the result of light energy being carried in discrete quantized packets. This discovery led to the quantum revolution."

So, he basically described photons as a particle for the first time. That's also ridiculously huge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect Considering they had been generally thought of as a wave before that. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations) Setting the stage for a lot of wave / particle duality aka QM theory.

[Someone]

You are forgetting Sir Isaac :-)

I don't think he used the word photon, but he did describe light as particles, and had (flawed, but that is science) arguments for that (http://www.studyphysics.ca/newnotes/20/unit04_light/chp1719_...)

[fbeeper]

I don't think that they even expect them to be predictors of importance or popularity. The "best paper" award can give a hint of temporary fashions or about what seemed to be interesting concepts/works at a certain point in time. That's why it seems especially interesting to see them compared with the "top cited" in these charts.