Switzerland is champion of scientific excellence and ahead of US. - Switzerland is now number one in the world league tables of countries in terms of quality and scale of scientific work undertaken. According to a study by Thomson Reuters (“Essential Science Indicators”) Switzerland is now ahead of the US. The news agency listed the publication of scientific articles in 20 countries and covered all the different disciplines over a period of 10 years (from 1999 to mid August 2009). In qualitative terms, it takes into account the number of references made to these publications, reflecting their impact on the global community. With 171,248 publications, Switzerland has obtained 15.73 points in quality ratings, as opposed to 15.02 for the US (2.974 million publications). Denmark is in third place (14.77 points; 92,734 publications), the Netherlands in fourth position (14.47 points; 236,344 publications) and Scotland in fifth place (14.29 points; 106,559 publications. If we take into account money invested in research, the Danes are champions in “return on investment”: with a relatively modest budget of €5.8 billion in 2007 for 29,500 researchers (public and private sectors), they managed to rival the two countries at the top of the league table. This is not the case with the Germans, who find themselves in 11th place, with a budget of € 61.5 billion and 284,000 researchers, the French are in 15th place (€39.4 billion and 211,000 researchers) and the British in sixth place (€36.7 billion and 175,000 researchers). Switzerland particularly distinguishes itself in the domains of biology and biochemistry. With a qualitative rating of 24.38 points, it is in first place in this sub-category, ahead of the US, which is still in second place in this category with 23.48 points. Scotland is in third place (22.56 points), which continues to benefit from the Dolly the sheep cloning effect, followed by the United Kingdom (21.75 points), in fourth place. Germany is in fifth position (19.36 points) closely followed by Denmark (6th; 9.31 points) and the Netherlands (7th; 19.30 points). The rather mediocre results obtained by China should be noted, which only obtained 5.24 points in all the different disciplines and 6.78 points for life sciences. (I.L./transl.fl)