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 experi ...

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, inc ...

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

cities A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

(see also,

urban scaling Urban scaling is an area of research within the study of cities as complex systems. It examines how various urban indicators change systematically with city size. The literature on urban scaling was motivated by the success of scaling theory in ...

). 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. It is a market town and has a Minster (church), minster church. Its population in 2011 was 64,621. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century priory, monastic foundation, 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 The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and pursued

graduate studies Postgraduate education, graduate education, or graduate school consists of academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications usually pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate (bachel ...

on the

pion In particle physics, a pion (, ) or pi meson, denoted with the Greek alphabet, Greek letter pi (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 ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

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

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

. After Los Alamos, he became president of the

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

allometric law Allometry (Ancient Greek "other", "measurement") is the study of the relationship of body size to shape, anatomy, physiology and behaviour, first outlined by Otto Snell in 1892, by D'Arcy Thompson in 1917 in ''On Growth and Form'' and by Juli ...

and other

power law In statistics, a power law is a Function (mathematics), functional relationship between two quantities, where a Relative change and difference, relative change in one quantity results in a relative change in the other quantity proportional to the ...

s in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

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

Time 100 ''Time'' 100 is a list of the top 100 most influential people, assembled by the American news magazine ''Time''. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, politicians, and journalists, the list is now a highly ...

. 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 and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

*
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 British theoretical physicists 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