New Things Under the Sun

Teacher Influence and Innovation

December 15, 2023 Matt Clancy Season 1 Episode 51
New Things Under the Sun
Teacher Influence and Innovation
Show Notes

Here’s a striking fact: through 2022, one in two Nobel prize winners in physics, chemistry, and medicine also had a Nobel prize winner as their academic advisor.undefined

What accounts for this extraordinary transmission rate of scientific excellence? In this podcast I’ll focus one potential explanation: what do we know about how innovative teachers influence their students, and their students’ subsequent innovative career? I’ll focus on two strands of literatures: roughly speaking, how teachers influence what their students are interested in and the impact of their work.

This podcast is an audio read through of the (initial version of the) article "Teacher Influence and Innovation," originally published on New Things Under the Sun.

Articles discussed


Borowiecki, Karol Jan. 2022. Good Reverberations? Teacher Influence in Music Composition since 1450. Journal of Political Economy 130(4): 991-1090. https://doi.org/10.1086/718370

Koschnick, Julius. 2023. Teacher-directed scientific change: The case of the English Scientific Revolution. PhD job market paper.

Azoulay, Pierre, Christopher C. Liu, and Toby E. Stuart. 2017. Social Influence Given (Partially) Deliberate Matching: Career Imprints in the Creation of Academic Entrepreneurs. American Journal of Sociology 122(4): 1223-1271. https://doi.org/10.1086/689890

Biasi, Barbara, and Song Ma. 2023. The Education-Innovation Gap. NBER Working Paper 29853. https://doi.org/10.3386/w29853

Waldinger, Fabian. 2010. Quality Matters: The Expulsion of Professors and the Consequences for PhD Student Outcomes in Nazi Germany. Journal of Political Economy 118(4): 787-831. https://doi.org/10.1086/655976