Authoratory.com is an interesting site for finding authors, or, as they spin it, experts on a particular subject area. It mines the PubMed database and uses algorithms to analyze the author information. By doing searches you can find out how often someone is a first or second author, what funding they might have received and their publishing history. From what I can make out it only goes back to 2000…so from a historic perspective its not going to give you a very good background on a particular persons history, but then 5 years is an eternity in medicine so maybe that doesn’t matter.
I guess if you are looking for an expert in a particular area then it might be of use, although I’ve played around with it a little and I’m not sure it makes the job of finding experts any easier, after all if people write more papers on an area it doesn’t mean they are necessarily an expert right? They just have more time on their hands and work for an institution that allows you to publish your work. Also I’m not sure how it deals with the old issue of people with the same name. 
When I am asked to find experts I usually look at review articles and find experts that way – I figure if someone has time to write a review that is peer reviewed in a journal then they must be reasonably knowledgeable in that area. I also check conference speakers using the same logic.
Anyway, if you are a scientist and/or author you may have some fun checking yourself out on this site and seeing what information they have mined on you.
