World's shortest Physics paper is titled The Ratio of Proton and Electron Mass published in the year 1951 by Friedrich Lenz. It contains just twenty-seven words, one equation, one number, and one reference
The record-holders for the shortest papers in chemistry and biology include humorous commentary pieces with zero body words, as well as some of the most historic, ground-breaking discoveries in science that were condensed into a single page.
The Shortest Paper in Chemistry: 0 Words
The shortest paper in chemistry contains absolutely no text in the body of the article.
- The Paper: "A Comprehensive Overview of Chemical-Free Consumer Products" (2014/2016).
- The Authors: Alexander F. G. Goldberg and C. J. Chemjobber.
- The Story: The authors submitted a completely blank paper to make a humorous point about marketing. Because everything in the physical universe is chemically composed of atoms and elements, a truly "chemical-free" consumer product cannot exist. Nature Chemistry originally featured it on their blog, and the Wiley journal Chemie in unserer Zeit officially published the completely blank paper in 2016.The Shortest Papers in Biology
Biology features a mix of concise, Nobel Prize-winning science and blunt, two-word responses.
1. The Shortest Debate Response: 2 Words
- The Paper: "Enough already." (2013).
- The Author: Ian Tattersall (Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History).
- The Story: Published in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, this entire paper was a response to an ongoing, years-long professional disagreement regarding primate evolution and taxonomy with colleague Matt Cartmill. Tattersall decided to end the back-and-forth debate using just a single, decisive phrase.
2. The Shortest Influential Biology Discovery: ~1 Page
- The Paper: “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” (1953).
- The Authors: James Watson and Francis Crick.
- The Story: This monumental, Nobel Prize-winning paper cracked the code of life by first describing the double-helix structure of DNA. Despite reshaping the entire landscape of modern genetics and biology, the original paper is remarkably concise—measuring just over a single page in length. Honorable Mention: The Shortest in All of Science
The absolute shortest peer-reviewed scientific paper belongs to psychology. In 1974, clinical psychologist Dennis Upper published a paper titled “The Unsuccessful Self-Treatment of a Case of ‘Writer’s Block’”. True to the condition he was studying, the paper contained zero words, leaving the page completely blank.
