Here is the famous picture of the 1927 Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons.  It is most likely the greatest collection of scientific minds.

Of the 29 pictured 17 eventually received Nobel prizes.  They are:

Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, Marie Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Pierre Langevin, Charles Eugene Guye, C. T. R. Wilson, Owen W. Richardson

Peter Debye, Martin Knudson, W. Lawrence Bragg, Hans Kramer, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr, Auguste Piccard, Émile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Edouard Herzen,Théophile de Donder, Erwin Schrodinger, Jules-Emile Vershaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Ralph Howard Fowler, Leon Brillouin.

This is one high-powered focal group. 

Of course 10 or so were top producers, 10 or so were mediocre and 10 or so were below average.

So how do you rate these guys?  With 68% getting Nobel prizes it really can’t be used to determine top half, much less top third.

So take a stab at it and determine the bottom third slackers. 

Obviously this would be a silly exercise.  This is one of the problems with bringing together the best of the best.