Eugene Eli Garfield (September 16, 1925 – February 26, 2017)
was an American
linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of language
A language is a structured system of communication
Communication (from Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo ...

and businessman, one of the founders of
bibliometrics
Bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyse books, articles and other publications. Bibliometric methods are frequently used in the field of library and information science. The sub-field of bibliometrics which concerns itself wit ...
and
scientometrics
Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of bibliometrics
Bibliometrics is the use of statistical methods to analyse books, articles and other publ ...
. He helped to create ''
Current Contents
''Current Contents'' is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is published online and in several different printed subject sections.
History
''Curren ...
'', ''
Science Citation Index
The Science Citation Index (SCI) is a citation index
A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citation
A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded ...
'' (SCI), ''
Journal Citation Reports
''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationAnnual publications, more often simply called annuals, are periodical publications appearing regularly once per year."Annuals", in ''Encyclopedia of library and information science'' ( ...
'', and ''Index Chemicus'', among others, and founded the magazine ''
The Scientist''.
Early life and education
Garfield was born in 1925 in New York City as Eugene Eli Garfinkle,
[ and was raised in a Lithuanian-Italian ]Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים ISO 259-2ISO
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO; ) is an international standard
are technical standards developed by international organizations (intergovernmental organizations), suc ...

family. His parents were second generation immigrants living in East Bronx
The East Bronx is the part of the New York City
New York, often called New York City to distinguish it from , or NYC for short, is the in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is als ...
in New York City
New York, often called New York City to distinguish it from New York State
New York is a state
State may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of ...

. He studied at the University of Colorado
The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities
A university ( la, universitas, 'a whole') is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in various academic discipl ...
and University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public
In public relations
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization ...

before getting a Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language
A classical language is a language
A language is a structured system of communication
Communication (from Latin ''communicare' ...
degree in chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific
Science () is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity or awareness, of someone or something, such as facts
A fact is an occurrence in the real world. T ...

from Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of ...

in 1949. Garfield also received a degree in Library Science from Columbia University in 1953 He went on to do his PhD
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken in the area around Rome, known as La ...
in the Department of Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language
A language is a structured system of communication
Communication (from Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo ...

at the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a in , Pennsylvania. The university, established as the College of Philadelphia in 1740, is one of the nine chartered prior to the . , Penn's founder and first president, advocated an edu ...

, which he completed in 1961 for developing an algorithm
In and , an algorithm () is a finite sequence of , computer-implementable instructions, typically to solve a class of problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are always and are used as specifications for performing s, , , and other ...

for translating chemical nomenclature
A chemical nomenclature is a set of rules to generate systematic nameA systematic name is a name given in a systematic way to one unique group, organism, object or chemical substance
A chemical substance is a form of matter
In classical ph ...
into chemical formula
A chemical formula is a way of presenting information about the chemical proportions of s that constitute a particular or molecule, using symbols, numbers, and sometimes also other symbols, such as parentheses, dashes, brackets, commas and ...
s.
Career and research
Working as a laboratory assistant at Columbia University after his graduation, Garfield indexed all previously synthesized compounds so that not to remake them, which helped him understand that his inclination to information towards science was bigger than towards chemistry.
In 1951, he got a position at the Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* "In Private
"In Private" was the third single in a row to be a charting success for United Kingdom, British singer Dusty S ...

in Baltimore, Maryland, where most of the National Library of Medicine
The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United Sta ...
information systems were developed. There he built search and cataloging system methods using . In 1953, at the First Symposium on Machine Methods in Scientific Documentation, Garfield got introduced to Shepard's Citations
''Shepard's Citations'' is a citator used in United States
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US), or America, is a country Contiguous United States, primarily located in North America. It con ...
.
In 1956, Garfield founded the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), which was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ISI formed a major part of the science division of Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters Corporation () is a Canadian-American multinational
Multinational may refer to:
* Multinational corporation, a corporate organization operating in multiple countries
* Multinational force, a military body from multiple co ...
. In October 2016 Thomson Reuters completed the sale of its intellectual property and science division; it is now known as Clarivate Analytics
Clarivate is a company that operates a collection of services, in the areas of and ; / , and for pharmacy and , , and ; protection, and and protection. In the academy and the scientific community, Clarivate is known for being the company ...

.
Garfield was responsible for many innovative bibliographic products, including ''Current Contents
''Current Contents'' is a rapid alerting service database from Clarivate Analytics, formerly the Institute for Scientific Information and Thomson Reuters. It is published online and in several different printed subject sections.
History
''Curren ...
'', the ''Science Citation Index
The Science Citation Index (SCI) is a citation index
A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citation
A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded ...
'' (SCI), and other citation databases, the ''Journal Citation Reports
''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationAnnual publications, more often simply called annuals, are periodical publications appearing regularly once per year."Annuals", in ''Encyclopedia of library and information science'' ( ...
'', and ''Index Chemicus''. He was the founding editor and publisher of '' The Scientist'', a news magazine for life scientists. In 2003, the University of South Florida
The University of South Florida (USF) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus located in Tampa, Florida, Tampa, Florida; and other campuses in St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Petersburg and Sarasota, Florida, Saraso ...
School of Information was honored to have him as lecturer for the Alice G. Smith Lecture. In 2007, he launched HistCite, a bibliometric analysis and visualization software package.
Following ideas inspired by Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II, World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almo ...

's highly cited 1945 article ''As We May Think
"As We May Think" is a 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research ...
'', Garfield undertook the development of a comprehensive citation index
A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index
A bibliographic index is a bibliography intended to help find a publication. Citations are usually listed by author and subject in separate sections, or in a single alphabetical sequence under a ...
showing the propagation of scientific thinking; he started the Institute for Scientific Information
The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) was an academic publishing service, founded by Eugene Garfield
Eugene Eli Garfield (September 16, 1925 – February 26, 2017) was an American linguist and businessman, one of the founders of bibliom ...
in 1956 (it was sold to the Thomson Corporation
The Thomson Corporation was one of the world's largest information companies. It was established in 1989 following a merger between International Thomson Organisation
International Thomson Organization (ITO) was a company that existed from 1978 ...
in 1992). According to Garfield, "the citation index ... may help a historian to measure the influence of an article — that is, its 'impact factor'". The creation of the ''Science Citation Index'' made it possible to calculate impact factor #REDIRECT Impact factor #REDIRECT Impact factor#REDIRECT Impact factor
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly average number of citat ...
, which ostensibly measures the importance of scientific journals. It led to the unexpected discovery that a few journals like ''Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the natural, physical, material world or universe
The universe ( la, universus) is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxy, galaxies, and all other forms of matter an ...
'' and ''Science
Science () is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity or awareness, of someone or something, such as facts
A fact is something that is truth, true. The usual test for a statement of ...
'' were core for all of hard science
Hard science and soft science are colloquial
Colloquialism or colloquial language is the style (sociolinguistics), linguistic style used for casual communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in con ...
. The same pattern does not happen with the humanities or the social sciences.
His entrepreneurial flair in having turned what was, at least at the time, an obscure and specialist metric into a highly profitable business has been noted.[
Garfield's work led to the development of several ]information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes and development of both computer h ...
algorithms, like the HITS algorithmHyperlink-Induced Topic Search (HITS; also known as hubs and authorities) is a link analysis algorithm that rates Web pages, developed by Jon Kleinberg. The idea behind Hubs and Authorities stemmed from a particular insight into the creation of web p ...
and PageRank
PageRank (PR) is an algorithm
In and , an algorithm () is a finite sequence of , computer-implementable instructions, typically to solve a class of problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are always and are used as specifications ...

. Both use the structured citation between websites through hyperlinks. Google
Google LLC is an American multinational
Multinational may refer to:
* Multinational corporation, a corporate organization operating in multiple countries
* Multinational force, a military body from multiple countries
* Multinational stat ...

co-founders Larry Page
Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of the co-founders of Google, along with Sergey Brin.
Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unt ...

and Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin (russian: Серге́й Миха́йлович Брин, tr. ''Sergéj Mixájlovič Brin''; born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. Together with Larry Page
Lawrence ...
acknowledged Gene in their development of PageRank, the algorithm that powers their company's search engine. Garfield published over 1,000 essays.
Honors and awards
Garfield was awarded the John Price Wetherill Medal
The John Price Wetherill Medal was an award of the Franklin Institute
The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and wikt:sta ...
in 1984 and Derek de Solla Price Memorial Medal in 1984. He was also awarded the Richard J. Bolte Sr. Award in 2007. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia
Philadelphia (colloquially known simply as Philly) is the largest city in the Commonwealth
A commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community ...
that same year. The Association for Library and Information Science Education has a fund for doctoral research through an award named after Garfield.
Criticism
Writing in ''Physiology News'', No. 69, Winter 2007, David Colquhoun
David Colquhoun (born 19 July 1936) is a British pharmacologist at University College London (UCL). He has contributed to the general theory of receptor and synaptic mechanisms, and in particular the theory and practice of single ion channel fu ...

of the Department of Pharmacology, University College London
University College London, which Trade name, operates as UCL, is a major public university , public research university located in London, United Kingdom. UCL is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federa ...
, described the "impact factor #REDIRECT Impact factor #REDIRECT Impact factor#REDIRECT Impact factor
The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly average number of citat ...
," a method for comparing scholarly journals, as "the invention of Eugene Garfield, a man who has done enormous harm to true science." Colquhoun ridiculed C. Hoeffel's assertion that Garfield's impact factor "has the advantage of already being in existence and is, therefore, a good technique for scientific evaluation" by saying, "you can't get much dumber than that. It is a 'good technique' because it is already in existence? There is something better. Read the papers."
Personal life
Garfield is survived by a wife, three sons, a daughter, a step-daughter, two granddaughters, and two great-grandchildren.
References
External links
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*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Garfield, Eugene Eli
1925 births
American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent
Bibliometricians
2017 deaths
University of South Florida faculty