Can a scientist meaningfully be an author of more than 1000 papers? In chemistry and physics, there are now a number of scientists who appear as authors on over 1,000 papers. Famous professors can have good funding and then a large research group where their research fellows work in parallel while they apply for more funds.

However, when it comes to 1,000 papers, to me it no longer seems possible for a person to make a legitimate contribution to each paper. In other words, it seems the famous professor's contribution must be trivial to many of these papers. I even wonder if there is time to read all of their papers carefully.

Do these authors simply get authorship in return for getting funding and running a group, or is it possible for them to be a full author in the normal sense of the word for most or all of their papers?
It seems like a single person could make a meaningful contribution to 1000 papers. Assuming 40 years of high publishing productivity (35-75 years old), 1000 papers requires 2 a month. With an 80 percent time commitment on a 50 hour work week, that is 80 hours of contribution per paper. I think 80 hours is enough time to make a contribution to a paper worthy of authorship. Simply discounting papers because someone has published a lot seems unfair.