21 May 2010

A paper with 2789 authors

I came across this physics paper by browsing the arXiv.org e-Print archive tonight. It is titled
"Readiness of the ATLAS Liquid Argon Calorimeter for LHC Collisions"
and has 2789 authors! Yes, that's right:
Two thousand seven hundred and eighty nine authors!

The papers is 31 pages long. Seven of these pages are devoted to the listing of the authors' names. Actually, all letters of the alphabet are there: there is at least one author whose family name starts with any given letter. It takes another 4 pages to list the authors' affiliations. One of the authors is marked as deceased at the time of submission of the paper. (Considering their number, this must be a not-so-unlikely event.)

I wish I knew whether this is a world record.

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