Mentorship and protégé success in STEM fields

Mentorship is arguably a scientist’s most significant collaborative relationship; yet of all collaborations, comparatively little research exists on the link between mentorship and protégé success. Using new large-scale data from the genealogical and performance records of 10s of thousands of scientists worldwide from 1960 to the present, we found that mentorship is associated with diverse forms of protégé success, significantly increasing protégés’ chances of producing celebrated research, being inducted into the National Academy of Science, and achieving superstardom. Paradoxically, protégés achieve their highest impact when they display intellectual independence from their mentors. Protégés do their best work when they break from their mentor’s research topics and coauthor no more than a small portion of their overall research with their mentors.