Is there a way to find out who the best doctors in a given field really are?

I’m talking about the doctors who the doctors look up to.
When my husband had knee replacement surgery we lucked out because we happened to meet an orthopedic sales person who had just attended an orthopedic convention where the surgeon who invented the minimally invasive knee replacement and the tools to install it was speaking.
The recent question about cateracts surgery and the discussion about different kinds of lenses prompted me to want to find the person who is on the cutting edge (pun intended) of eye surgery.