Various reasons for this interesting phenomena, one that springs to my mind : it could that these papers were overshadowed by latter relevant works from the same authour. Another could be the time between concept ideation and progress in real world applications. Intestellar travels research might be citing basic obscure ideas formulated in this century on space time quantum physics generations down the road :) . Maybe .
RE: Sleeping beauties in academia - what are they and what lessons can be learnt from it?