One of the most important questions. Matt Clancy reviews the research:

Borowiecki’s main analysis shows that composers write music with themes that are more similar to the themes of their teachers, than to other composers.

students are more likely to write about a given scientific topic if the faculty of the college [which] people in their region usually go to happen to be stronger in that field during the years the student is at uni.

Something in the air, I guess! And here’s a methodology:

Koschnick’s study exploits an even more abrupt change in the faculty: the ouster of roughly half the fellows of the University of Oxford following the English civil war (they didn’t support the winning side) and their replacement, which he argues was random at least as regards to scientific field interest.

Koschnick finds that across colleges, if faculty writing on scientific topics rose by about 1 standard deviation – or about 650% – then students would increase their share of writing on these topics by 5-15% (from a low base). Borowiecki finds that composers are 10-30% of one standard deviation closer to the music of their teachers than the comparison group.

Note to self: my interests must be 650% more potent to influence my students.

And on one important question: whom to learn from?

Highly innovative people, willing to take on apprentices, but who have not yet settled down to write textbooks seem like a good bet. If we extrapolate a bit from Biasi and Ma’s paper on syllabi, they might be the most likely to teach about brand new research ideas, the kind that are not yet widely understood. Or they might have acquired tacit knowledge that is difficult to codify and perhaps difficult to master. Perhaps they taught themselves that tacit knowledge. Or perhaps it was taught to them by their own teachers.

All in all, he shows mentors are essential for top students. But we should expect to see elasticities everywhere, and not just at the top.