Geoffrey West

Professor Geoffrey West
Born Goeffrey Brian West
1940 (age 74–75)
Taunton, Somerset, United Kingdom
Residence United States
Fields Theoretical physics
Theoretical biology
Institutions Santa Fe Institute
Los Alamos National Laboratory
University of New Mexico
Alma mater University of Cambridge
Stanford University
Thesis I. Form Factors of the Three-Body Nuclei II. Coulomb Scattering and the Form Factor of the Pion (1966)
Known for Metabolic theory of ecology
Notable awards Mercer Award
Spouse Jacqueline West
Website
www.santafe.edu/about/people/profile/Geoffrey%20West

Geoffrey Brian West (born c. 1940) is a British theoretical physicist, former president and distinguished professor of the Santa Fe Institute. He is one of the leading scientists working on a scientific model of cities. Among other things his work states that with the doubling of a city's size, services per capita will generally increase by 15%.[1]

Biography

Born in Taunton, Somerset, a rural town in western England, West moved to London when he was 13.[2] He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from the University of Cambridge and pursued graduate studies on the Pion at Stanford University.[3]

West became a Stanford faculty member before he joined the particle theory group at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory. After Los Alamos, he became president of the Santa Fe Institute, where he worked and works on biological issues such as the allometric law[4] and other power laws in biology.[5][6]

West has since been honored as one of Time magazine's Time 100.[7] He is a member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board.[8]

Selected publications

Articles, a selection:[9][10][11]

References

  1. ↑ Bettencourt, L. M. A.; Lobo, J.; Helbing, D.; Kuhnert, C.; West, G. B. (2007). "Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (17): 7301–7306. doi:10.1073/pnas.0610172104. PMC 1852329. PMID 17438298.
  2. ↑ "Geoffrey West". Physics Central. Retrieved 2006-05-02.
  3. ↑ West, Geoffrey Brian (1966). I. Form Factors of the Three-Body Nuclei II. Coulomb Scattering and the Form Factor of the Pion (PhD thesis). Stanford University.
  4. ↑ West, G. B.; Brown, J. H.; Enquist, B. J. (1997). "A General Model for the Origin of Allometric Scaling Laws in Biology". Science 276 (5309): 122–126. doi:10.1126/science.276.5309.122. PMID 9082983.
  5. ↑ West, G. B.; Brown, J. H.; Enquist, B. J. (2001). "A general model for ontogenetic growth". Nature 413 (6856): 628–631. doi:10.1038/35098076. PMID 11675785.
  6. ↑ Gillooly, J. F.; Brown, J. H.; West, G. B.; Savage, V. M.; Charnov, E. L. (2001). "Effects of Size and Temperature on Metabolic Rate". Science 293 (5538): 2248–2251. doi:10.1126/science.1061967. PMID 11567137.
  7. ↑ Time Magazine's article about West
  8. ↑ World Knowledge Dialogue
  9. ↑ Geoffrey West's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database, a service provided by Elsevier.
  10. ↑ List of publications from Microsoft Academic Search
  11. ↑ Geoffrey West publications in Google Scholar

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Geoffrey West