Geoffrey Brian West (born 15 December 1940) is a British

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experime ...

and former president and distinguished professor of the

Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inclu ...

. He is one of the leading scientists working on a scientific model of

cities A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

. Among other things, his work states that with the doubling of a city's population, salaries per capita will generally increase by 15%.

Biography

Born in

Taunton Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the ...

, Somerset, a rural town in western England, West moved to London when he was 13. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and pursued

graduate studies Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachelor's) degree. The organization and stru ...

on the

pion In particle physics, a pion (or a pi meson, denoted with the Greek letter pi: ) is any of three subatomic particles: , , and . Each pion consists of a quark and an antiquark and is therefore a meson. Pions are the lightest mesons and, more gene ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. West became a Stanford faculty member before he joined the particle theory group at

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque, New Mexico, Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Albuquerque metropolitan area, Tiguex , Offi ...

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

. After Los Alamos, he became president of the

, where he worked and works on biological issues such as the

allometric law Allometry is the study of the relationship of body size to shape, anatomy, physiology and finally behaviour, first outlined by Otto Snell in 1892, by D'Arcy Thompson in 1917 in ''On Growth and Form'' and by Julian Huxley in 1932. Overview Allom ...

and other

power law In statistics, a power law is a functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a proportional relative change in the other quantity, independent of the initial size of those quantities: one q ...

s in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary ...

. West has since been honoured as one of ''Time'' magazine's

Time 100 ''Time'' 100 (often stylized as ''TIME'' 100) is an annual listicle of the 100 most influential people in the world, assembled by the American news magazine ''Time''. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, p ...

. He is a member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board.

Selected publications

* Necia Grant Cooper, Geoffrey B. West (eds.) ''Particle Physics: A Los Alamos Primer.'' CUP Archive, 29 April 1988. * Brown, James H., and Geoffrey B. West, eds. ''Scaling in biology.'' Oxford University Press, 2000. * ;Articles (selection)Geoffrey West publications in Google Scholar
/ref> * * West, Geoffrey B., James H. Brown, and Brian J. Enquist. "The fourth dimension of life: fractal geometry and allometric scaling of organisms." ''science'' 284.5420 (1999): 1677–1679. * West, Geoffrey B., James H. Brown, and Brian J. Enquist. "A general model for the structure and allometry of plant vascular systems." ''Nature'' 400.6745 (1999): 664–667. * * * Bettencourt, L. M., Lobo, J., Helbing, D., Kühnert, 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. *Scientific American often changes the title of a print article when it is published online. This article is titled "Big Data Needs a Big Theory to Go with It" online.

References

External links

"Yeah, but what about the crayfish?"
– Article about West's scaling law work on PhysicsWorld.com
Scaling Laws In Biology And Other Complex Systems
– Talk he gave at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

*
The surprising math of cities and corporations
– TED Talk

* ttps://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp ''New York Times'' article about West's work on cities {{DEFAULTSORT:West, Geoffrey 1940 births Living people Alumni of the University of Cambridge Complex systems scientists English biophysicists English physicists Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel People from Santa Fe, New Mexico People from Taunton Scientific American people Stanford University alumni University of New Mexico faculty Santa Fe Institute people Fellows of the American Physical Society

Biography

See also

Selected publications

References

External links