3.1. Number of Publications and Author StatusFigure 1 shows a flow chart outlining the steps of our systematic search of Web of Science Core Collection on 3 August 2022. Overall, there were 712 records for the author “Tanner M”, the large majority of which were affiliated with “Basel”, where Tanner pursued most of his academic career. Corrections, meeting abstracts, and notes were excluded (n = 91), 10 pieces were added through a manual search, and nine articles published in 2022 were removed. Taken together, there were 520 original papers, 43 reviews, 33.5 editorials, 14 letters, 6.5 book chapters, and 5 proceedings papers, summing up to a total of 622 records that were subjected to further analysis.Figure 2 displays the number of publications per year over the 44-year period from 1978 to 2021, stratified by Tanner’s author position as either first author (n = 38), co-author (n = 394), or last author (n = 190). The first piece, entitled “Studies on Dipetalonema vitae (Filarioidea). II. Antibody dependent adhesion of peritoneal exudate cells to microfilariae in vitro” was published in 1978 in Acta Tropica, and was co-authored by Professor Niklaus Weiss, Tanner’s Ph.D. supervisor [11]. Of note, Acta Tropica was the house journal of the Swiss Tropical Institute from the founding of the institute in 1943 until it was sold to Elsevier in the late 1980s [12].

In the first decade of Tanner’s scientific career (1978–1987), he published a total of 31 articles, usually 1–5 articles per year, with about half of the articles as first author (n = 15). In the following decade (1988–1997), Tanner was associated with 74 articles, mainly as last author. From 1998 onwards, Tanner published 13 articles or more (up to 38 articles in 2015) each year; during this 24-year period, he mainly acted as co-author.

3.4. Main Diseases and Pathogens StudiedAnalysing the diseases and pathogens covered in Tanner’s research output, two observations stand out. First, the range of diseases and pathogens studied is impressive. Second, almost two thirds of the publications pertain to parasitic diseases (n = 402.5), with malaria clearly in the lead (n = 243.5) (Figure 5). Malaria is followed by schistosomiasis (n = 106.5), which constitutes the second most important disease researched. Filariasis (n = 13.5, including the keywords lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis) and trypanosomiasis (n = 5.5, including Chagas’ disease) are diseases that are covered to a considerably smaller extent in Tanner’s publication output. Under ‘other parasitic diseases’, a range of pathogens and diseases are covered, including the following key words: intestinal parasites, parasitic worms, helminths, geohelminths, soil-transmitted helminths, hookworm, enterobiasis, strongyloidiasis, Clonorchis sinensis, Echinostoma caproni, Fasciola hepatica, Opisthorchis viverrini, Paragonimus westermani, amoebiasis, giardiasis, and intestinal cryptosporidiasis, Cryptosporidium, and leishmaniasis).

In addition to parasitic diseases, publications that focus on viruses (n = 39.5) and bacteria (n = 25) also appeared in Tanner’s research output. About 5% of the publications pertain to HIV/AIDS (n = 29.5). In the past 2 years, a few articles were published about COVID-19 (n = 4.5). Other viral diseases, including norovirus, pegivirus, and Ebola only played a marginal role (n = 5.5) in Tanner’s research output.

As regards bacterial diseases, several publications pertain to tuberculosis (n = 8.5) and other bacterial diseases, including vibrio, Streptoccocus, Staphylococcus, Rhodococcus coprophilus, Neisseria meningitidis, Mycobacterium bovis, leprosy, cholera, Coxiella burnetii, Buruli ulcer, brucellosis, and Q-fever (n = 16.5).

Additionally, 12 publications summarised under the category ‘varia’, cover a range of other diseases, disease symptoms, or health conditions, such as anaemia, goitre, iodine deficiency, hydrocele, fungal infections, encephalitis, diarrhoea, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hepatitis B, C, and E, meningitis, and sepsis.

Finally, almost a quarter of publications analysed (n = 143) do not cover a disease- or pathogen-specific topic, but rather discuss health care, disease control and elimination, health policy, and health research related topics.

3.5. Countries Where Researched Was Pursued

While some of Tanner’s publications, particularly in the earlier years, involve exclusively laboratory research, most of the articles focus on epidemiological studies, clinical trials, and health systems research. Indeed, based on an analysis of article titles and abstracts, 402.4 of the publications could be linked to a specific country where the research was conducted. There were another 19.6 articles that only mentioned broad regions (i.e., Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Central West Africa, n = 17.4; Asia, n = 1; South America, n = 1; and Middle East, n = 0.2). The remaining 200 publications could not be linked to any specific geographical setting.

Among the 402.4 study sites, “field work” could be assigned to any of 59 countries. As shown in Figure 6, one country—Tanzania—stands out, where more than half of the research was conducted (n = 212.2). Another four countries where Tanner and colleagues pursued a considerable amount of research emerged: Côte d’Ivoire (n = 49), China (n = 27.5), Switzerland (n = 21), and Chad (n = 13). In the remaining 54 countries, only a few studies were conducted with Tanner’s involvement (less than 10 publications each). 3.6. Capacity Building Efforts

During his long career, Tanner supervised and co-supervised numerous MSc, MD, Ph.D., and postdoctoral students. He taught at the Bachelor, Master, and Doctorate level, and was deeply involved in professional postgraduate teaching and training at Swiss TPH, University of Basel, the Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), and elsewhere. Moreover, he played an instrumental role in progressing the career of many young scientists towards becoming assistant, associate, and full professors.

According to Tanner’s curriculum vitae, complemented with an online search of a repository of Ph.D. theses by the University of Basel, Tanner supervised 65 Ph.D. students and co-supervised another 235 Ph.D. students. Figure 7 shows the nationality of these 300 doctoral students. More than a third of the Ph.D. students were from Switzerland (n = 112.5), while the remaining students came from 54 nations. Tanzanian students form the second most important cluster (n = 34), followed by students from Germany (n = 23), USA (n = 14), Ghana (n = 10), and Côte d’Ivoire (n = 7). Italy and the UK are represented by 5.5 students each.