  The recognition of academic excellence is fundamental to the scientific and
academic endeavor. In particular, academic scientometrics that are able to
computationally capture academic excellence are of great interest. In this
work, we propose and investigate an unconventional scientometric termed the
Academic Midas Touch (AMT) that refers to a researcher's tendency to produce
outstanding publications (i.e., golden publications). Using an extensive
dataset of mathematicians, both award-winning and otherwise, we show that the
AMT scientometric is a valid and arguably valuable scientometric for the
distinction of academic excellence.
