Geoffrey West Explained

Geoffrey West
Birth Name:	Geoffrey Brian West
Birth Date:	1940 12, df=y
Birth Place:	Taunton, Somerset, United Kingdom
Field:	Theoretical physics Theoretical biology
Work Institutions:	Santa Fe Institute Los Alamos National Laboratory University of New Mexico
Alma Mater:	University of Cambridge Stanford University
Thesis Title:	I. Form Factors of the Three-Body Nuclei II. Coulomb Scattering and the Form Factor of the Pion
Thesis Url:	http://search.proquest.com/docview/302188497
Thesis Year:	1966
Known For:	Metabolic theory of ecology
Spouse:	Jacqueline West

Geoffrey Brian West (born 15 December 1940)^[1] is a British theoretical physicist and 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 population, salaries per capita will generally increase by 15%.^[2]

Biography

Born in Taunton, Somerset, a rural town in western England, West moved to London when he was 13.^[3] He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from the University of Cambridge and pursued graduate studies on the pion at Stanford University.^[4]

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^[5] and other power laws in biology.^{[6] [7]}

West has since been honoured as one of Time magazine's Time 100.^[8] He is a member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board.^[9]

See also

• Through the Wormhole#Season 3 (2012)

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.
• Book: West. Geoffrey. Scale: the universal laws of growth, innovation, sustainability, and the pace of life in organisms, cities, economies, and companies. 2017. Penguin Press. London, United Kingdom. 978-178022559-3.

Articles (selection)^[10]

• West . Geoffrey B. . Brown . James H. . Enquist . Brian J. . 1997 . A general model for the origin of allometric scaling laws in biology . Science . 276 . 5309. 122–126 . 10.1126/science.276.5309.122 . 9082983. 3140271 .
• 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.
• 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 . 10.1126/science.1061967 . 11567137 . 2001Sci...293.2248G . 234618 . 23 April 2015 . 4 March 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160304104956/https://dspace.unm.edu/bitstream/handle/1928/1656/science2001.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y . dead .
• Brown . J. H. . Gillooly . J. F. . Allen . A. P. . Savage . V. M. . West . G. B. . 2004 . Toward a metabolic theory of ecology . Ecology . 85 . 7. 1771–1789 . 10.1890/03-9000.
• 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.
• West, Geoffrey . May 2013 . Wisdom in numbers . Forum . . 308 . 5 . 7 . 10.1038/scientificamerican0513-14. 23627205. 2013SciAm.308e..14W. ^[11]

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
  • The surprising math of cities and corporations – TED Talk
• "New York Times" article about West's work on biological scaling
• New York Times article about West's work on cities

Notes and References

1. Web site: Geoffrey B.. West. Curriculum Vitae. sfi-edu.s3.amazonaws.com. 11 June 2014 . 17 August 2022.
2. Bettencourt . L. M. A. . Lobo . J. . Helbing . D. . Kuhnert . C. . West . G. B. . Geoffrey West. Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities . 10.1073/pnas.0610172104 . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 104 . 17 . 7301–7306 . 2007 . 17438298 . 1852329 . 2007PNAS..104.7301B . free .
3. Web site: Geoffrey West . PhysicsCentral . American Physical Society. 2019-01-27.
4. PhD . Geoffrey Brian. West . I. Form Factors of the Three-Body Nuclei II. Coulomb Scattering and the Form Factor of the Pion . Stanford University . 1966 . Geoffrey West. .
5. West . G. B. . Geoffrey West. Brown . J. H. . Enquist . B. J. . 10.1126/science.276.5309.122 . A General Model for the Origin of Allometric Scaling Laws in Biology . Science . 276 . 5309 . 122–126 . 1997 . 9082983. 3140271 .
6. West . G. B. . Geoffrey West. Brown . J. H. . Enquist . B. J. . 10.1038/35098076 . A general model for ontogenetic growth . Nature . 413 . 6856 . 628–631 . 2001 . 11675785. 2001Natur.413..628W . 4393103 .
7. Gillooly . J. F. . Brown . J. H. . West . G. B. . Geoffrey West. Savage . V. M. . Charnov . E. L. . Effects of Size and Temperature on Metabolic Rate . 10.1126/science.1061967 . Science . 293 . 5538 . 2248–2251 . 2001 . 11567137. 2001Sci...293.2248G . 234618 .
8. https://web.archive.org/web/20060615073639/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187290,00.html Time Magazine's article about West
9. http://www.wkdialogue.ch World Knowledge Dialogue
10. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=geoffrey+west Geoffrey West publications in Google Scholar
11. 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.