Modelling citation age data with right censoring

SummaryKlaus Fuchs, during his years in England as an immigrant, has written 20 scientific papers. One of these papers, published in 1938, became a fundamental text in solid state physics and for the development of microelectronics in succeeding decades. It was cited more than 1200 times in the period from 1945 until 2003. It appears to be a typical case of delayed recognition in science. Pioneering papers simultaneously written by Hahn & Straßmann and by Meitner & Frisch on the discovery of nuclear fission are considered for comparison.