Derek J. de Solla Price
Encyclopedia
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, historian of science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
, and information scientist
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
,
credited as the father of scientometrics
Scientometrics
Scientometrics is the science of measuring and analysing science. In practice, scientometrics is often done using bibliometrics which is a measurement of the impact of publications. Modern scientometrics is mostly based on the work of Derek J. de Solla Price and Eugene Garfield...
.
Biography
Price was born in LeytonLeyton
Leyton is an area of north-east London and part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest, located north east of Charing Cross. It borders Walthamstow and Leytonstone; Stratford in Newham; and Homerton and Lower Clapton in the London Borough of Hackney....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, to Philip Price, a tailor
Tailor
A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...
, and Fanny de Solla, a singer. He began work in 1938 as an assistant in a physics laboratory at the South West Essex Technical College, before studying Physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
and Mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
at the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
, where he received a B.Sc.
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
in 1942. He obtained a Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in experimental physics
Experimental physics
Within the field of physics, experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines concerned with the observation of physical phenomena in order to gather data about the universe...
from the University of London
University of London
-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
in 1946.
Price worked as a teacher of applied mathematics at Raffles College (which was to become part of the University of Singapore in 1948). It was there that he formulated his theory on the exponential growth of science, an idea that occurred to him when he noticed the growth in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society of London. It was established in 1665, making it the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science, and it has remained in continuous publication ever since, making it the world's...
between 1665 and 1850 – he had the complete set in his home while Raffles College had its library built.
After three years, Price returned to England to work on a second Ph.D., in the history of science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
, this time at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. During his Ph.D. studies, he accidentally discovered Equatorie of the Planetis, a manuscript written in Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, which he attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
.
Around 1950, Price adopted his mother's Sephardic
Sephardi Jews
Sephardi Jews is a general term referring to the descendants of the Jews who lived in the Iberian Peninsula before their expulsion in the Spanish Inquisition. It can also refer to those who use a Sephardic style of liturgy or would otherwise define themselves in terms of the Jewish customs and...
name, "de Solla", as a middle name. He was a "British Atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
... from a rather well-known Sephardic Jewish family", and although his Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
wife, Ellen, had been christened as a Lutheran, he did not, according to their son Mark
Mark de Solla Price
Mark de Solla Price is an author, journalist, public speaker, civil rights activist, and HIV/AIDS educator. Price is a long time Greenwich Village resident and Unitarian Universalist, and author of the book Living Positively in a World with HIV/AIDS...
, regard their marriage as "mixed", because they were both atheists.
After obtaining his second doctorate, Price moved to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, where he served as a consultant to the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
, and as a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is an independent postgraduate center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It was founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner...
in Princeton
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...
. His next post was at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, where he worked until his death, serving as the Avalon Professor of the History of Science, and as chair of a new department that encompassed the histories of science, technology, and medicine.
In 1984, Price received, posthumously, the ASIS
American Society for Information Science and Technology
The American Society for Information Science and Technology, sometimes abbreviated ASIS&T or ASIST, is a non-profit membership organization for information professionals...
Research Award for outstanding contributions in the field of information science.
Scientific contributions
Price's major scientific contributions include:- studies of the exponential growth of science and the half-life of scientific literature; together with the formulation of Price's Law, namely that 25% of scientific authors are responsible for 75% of published papers (Price 1963);
- quantitative studies of the network of citations between scientific papers (Price 1965), including the discovery that both the in- and out-degrees of a citation network have power-law distributions, making this the first published example of a scale-free networkScale-free networkA scale-free network is a network whose degree distribution follows a power law, at least asymptotically. That is, the fraction P of nodes in the network having k connections to other nodes goes for large values of k as...
; - a mathematical theory of the growth of citation networks, based on what would now be called a preferential attachmentPreferential attachmentA preferential attachment process is any of a class of processes in which some quantity, typically some form of wealth or credit, is distributed among a number of individuals or objects according to how much they already have, so that those who are already wealthy receive more than those who are not...
process (Price 1976); - an analysis of the Antikythera mechanismAntikythera mechanismThe Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera wreck. Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its time of construction is now estimated between 150 and 100...
, an ancient Greek clockwork calculator (Price 1959, 1974).
Notable publications
- "An ancient Greek computer", in Scientific American 200 (6):60-67 (1959).
- Science since Babylon, New Haven: Yale University PressYale University PressYale University Press is a book publisher founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day. It became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but remains financially and operationally autonomous....
(1961) - "Mechanical Waterclocks of the 14th Century in Fez, Morocco", in Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of the History of Science (Ithaca, N.Y, 1962), Paris: Hermann, pp. 599-602 (1962)
- Little Science, Big Science, New York: Columbia University PressColumbia University PressColumbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...
(1963) - "Networks of Scientific Papers", in Science 149 (3683):510-515 (1965).
- "Nations can Publish or Perish", in International Science and Technology 70 84-90 (1967)
- "Citation Measures of Hard Science, Soft Science, Technology, and Nonscience", in Nelson, C. E. & Pollock, D.K. (eds.), Communication among Scientists and Engineers, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, pp. 3-22 (1970).
- "Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism – A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B.C.", in Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (New Series) 64 (7):1-70 (1974). Also published as a book with the same title by Science History Publications, New York, (1975).
- "A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processes", in Journal of the American Society for Information Science 27:292-306 (1976)(Winner of 1976 JASIS paper award.)