For many academic scientists, having a list of published papers is the single most important factor that determines prestige, pay, promotions and job offers. Some scientists are more prolific than others. But one man, Yuri Struchkov, established a record of almost superhuman accomplishment. During a 10-year period he published more - far more - research papers than any other scientist on earth.

Struchkov was director of the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He was one of the world's great crystallographers. A crystallographer uses X-ray machines to take pictures of crystals. In the 20th century, this was one of the most important and powerful techniques by which chemists learned about the structures of complex molecules. Many a chemist has won honour and glory - and in some cases a Nobel prize - by using crystallography to explore nature's chemical secrets.

Still, for all his renown in the crystallographic community, Struchkov was almost unknown outside it until 1992. That year David Pendlebury, of the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadephia, used the institute's massive science citation database to see which scientist had published the largest number of papers during the decade 1981-90. The winner, hands down, was the little-known Struchkov: there were 948 research reports listing Yuri T Struchkov as either author or co-author. On average, a new Struchkov paper was published every 3.9 days during the entire 10-year span.

Struchkov's golden run began well before 1981, and continued well after 1990. No one has bothered tallying exact statistics for the other years.

For his prodigious contributions to world literature, Yuri T Struchkov won the 1992 Ig Nobel prize in the field of literature. Struchkov died in 1995. An obituary published in the journal Acta Crystallographica said that altogether he had published more than 2,000 scientific papers. The obituary marvelled at Struchkov's output, saying: "One may ask why Yuri forced publication so hard, what was the motivation that did not permit him to make his mission easier? His most convincing argument for not joining the Communist party was his deep preoccupation with research, which left no time for anything else.

He felt his only choice was to work hard, harder today than yesterday and much harder tomorrow. He was awarded the AN Nesmeyanov Gold Medal only in 1988 and elected belatedly as a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences in 1990."

Hard work is one possibility. Another was mentioned by western scientists familiar with the situation in the USSR. The equipment to do proper crystallography was scarce. It was rumoured that scientists were welcome to use the equipment at the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of the Academy of Sciences, in return for adding a certain person to the list of co-authors.

· Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize. Details of this year's Ig Nobel Tour in the UK, which runs until March 16, are on http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/ig-uk-tour