2Our quantitative understanding of how scientists choose and shift their research focus over time is highly consequential, because it affects the ways in which scientists are trained, science is funded, knowledge is organized and discovered, and excellence is recognized and rewarded [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Despite extensive investigations of various factors that influence a scientist's choice of research topics [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], quantitative assessments of mechanisms that give rise to macroscopic patterns characterizing research interest evolution of individual scientists remain limited. Here we perform a large-scale analysis of publication records, finding that research interest change follows a reproducible pattern characterized by an exponential distribution. We identify three fundamental features responsible for the observed exponential distribution, which arise from a subtle interplay between exploitation and exploration in research interest evolution [5,22]. We develop a random walk based model, allowing us to accurately reproduce the empirical observations. This work presents a quantitative analysis of macroscopic patterns governing research interest change, discovering a high degree of regularity underlying scientific research and individual careers."The essential tension" hypothesis set forth by Thomas Kuhn [5] has vividly highlighted the conflicting demands of scientific careers that require both exploration and exploitation [4,8,22].Indeed, career advancement, from promotion to obtaining grants, demands a steady stream of publications, which is often achieved through uninterrupted yet incremental contributions to existing, established research agenda. In contrast, frequent changes in research topics invite risk of failure and decreased productivity. The disciplinary boundaries, arising from such factors as implicit culture, tacit and accumulated knowledge [23,24] and peer recognition [3,25], together with intensifying specialization in science and engineering disciplines [26], make radical shifts, such as moving from chemical biology to high energy physics, extremely unlikely, if at all possible. On the other hand, although steady and focused research portfolio helps scientists stay productive, it potentially undermines chances for originality [8]. Indeed, innovative and novel insights often emerge from encountering new challenges and opportunities associated with venturing into new topics and/or incorporating them into existing research agenda [4,15,20,27,28].Given the broad impact on individual careers and strong implications for science and innovation policy, there is an urgent need for quantitative approaches to understanding the nature of research interest change undertaken by individual scientists throughout their careers. This becomes ever more so with the accelerating scale and complexity of scientific enterprise [2,26,29,30]. A variety of microscopic factors have been identified that drive a scientist's choice of research problems, 3 ranging from age...