So what can the voices of our researchers tell us? Let us begin with some of their thoughts about the nature of creativity. Social researchers typically reach their most important discoveries through slow processes, beginning with observation, and building up interpretations through their own experience and also through borrowing from others. Transposing an accepted idea into a new concept can be a crucial step. But – especially it seems among men – there may also be vividly remembered moments in a life when a new key idea comes home to stay.

Why is there this difference between men and women Pioneers? It does seem that the men are more likely to tell a story in which they are surprised by their own success, but know that they performed well themselves: for example, John Bynner on the impact of his student survey, or David Butler on his first television performance. By contrast almost all our women Pioneers present themselves as working as part of a big social movement with shared new perspectives. Thus, when Sara Arber takes up gender and ageing, she knows that she will find inequalities in resources between men and women; and when she moves into the sociology of sleep, she is not surprised that women more often suffer from sleep disturbance, or that men snore more.

Meghnad Lord Desai: economists don't do fieldwork

Not all social scientists believe in fieldwork or observation. Meghnad Desai, whose many writings include a book on the power of landowners in India, describes his early experiences of rural fieldwork as fruitless. For him, listening to villagers is a waste of time.