J. Maruhn and W. Greiner, "The Asymmetric Two-Center Shell Model", Z. Physik 251, 431 (1972). Cited 209 times.
The development of the asymmetric generalization of the two-center shell model was the task for my diploma thesis. The goal was to describe mass asymmetry in fission. The challenge was to produce a model reasonable calculable on the computers of that time (typically UNIVAC 1108 with 64K 36-bit words memory). That this goal was achieved quite well is illustrated by the remarkable fact that now, more than 30 years later, the model is still being used and the paper continues to be cited regularly. The picture of the citation numbers even shows a periodic revival of interest.
Efficiency was achieved by using two oscillator potentials linked in a smooth interpolation and doing most of the calculations (principally the integrations over parabolic cylinder functions) analytically. I was also the first person in physics in Frankfurt to use the algebra software "FORMAC" for that purpose.
Competing models were the one by the Nilsson group, which added an octupole deformation to a one-center oscillator and so had incorrect asymptotic behavior, and the Woods-Saxon-model by H. C. Pauli, which contained better physics but was much more complex and time-consuming to calculate.
It should be mentioned on the side that the volume (and later mass) asymmetry variable I invented in this work 
later was used by many groups even employing totally different nuclear models (of course the source was rarely cited).
K. Rutz, M. Bender, T. Burvenich, T. Schilling, P.-G. Reinhard,
J. A. Maruhn, and W. Greiner,
"Superheavy nuclei in self-consistent nuclear calculations" ,
Phys. Rev. C56, 238 (1997).
Cited 122 times.
This paper helped to stimulate revived interest in predictions of superheavy nuclei. Previously every few years someone would develop a new model or parametrization and then extraplate it to the superheavies (often only based on very few tests for known nuclie). In this paper, we gave the field a new quality by using parametrizations developped from comprehensive fits, both for Skyrme forces and relativistic mean field, and also discussing extrapolations with a large number of parametrizations, which all described known nuclei reasonably well. This gave an idea of the uncertainty of extrapolation. It also led to the discovery that Z=120, N=172 appears to be favored by the majority of models, and that the specific structure in that nucleus produces a central dip in the density (that effect was also discovered independently by another group, who, unfortunately for us, published first).