Geoffrey West

Geoffrey Brian West (born 15 December 1940)[1] 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, salaries per capita will generally increase by 15%.[2]

Geoffrey West
Born	Geoffrey Brian West 15 December 1940[1] Taunton, Somerset, United Kingdom
Alma mater	University of Cambridge Stanford University
Known for	Metabolic theory of ecology
Spouse(s)	Jacqueline West
Awards	Weldon Memorial Prize (2005)
Scientific career
Fields	Theoretical physics Theoretical biology
Institutions	Santa Fe Institute Los Alamos National Laboratory University of New Mexico
Thesis	I. Form Factors of the Three-Body Nuclei II. Coulomb Scattering and the Form Factor of the Pion (1966)
Website	santafe.edu/about/people/profile/Geoffrey%20West

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]

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

Articles (selection)[10][11][12]

• West, Geoffrey B.; Brown, James H.; Enquist, Brian J. (1997). "A general model for the origin of allometric scaling laws in biology" (PDF). Science. 276 (5309): 122–126. doi:10.1126/science.276.5309.122. PMID 9082983.
• 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" (PDF). Science. 293 (5538): 2248–2251. Bibcode:2001Sci...293.2248G. doi:10.1126/science.1061967. PMID 11567137.
• Brown, J. H.; Gillooly, J. F.; Allen, A. P.; Savage, V. M.; West, G. B. (2004). "Toward a metabolic theory of ecology" (PDF). Ecology. 85 (7): 1771–1789. doi: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. Scientific American. 308 (5): 7. Bibcode:2013SciAm.308e..14W. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0513-14. PMID 23627205.[13]
• West, Geoffrey (2017)Scale: The Universal Laws of Life and Death in Organisms, Cities and Companies

References

1. Staff (11 June 2014). "GEOFFREY B. WEST CURRICULUM VITAE" (PDF). samoa.santafe.edu. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
2. 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. Bibcode:2007PNAS..104.7301B. doi:10.1073/pnas.0610172104. PMC 1852329. PMID 17438298.
3. "Geoffrey West". PhysicsCentral. American Physical Society. Retrieved 27 January 2019.
4. 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. ProQuest 302188497.
5. 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.
6. West, G. B.; Brown, J. H.; Enquist, B. J. (2001). "A general model for ontogenetic growth". Nature. 413 (6856): 628–631. Bibcode:2001Natur.413..628W. doi:10.1038/35098076. PMID 11675785.
7. 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. Bibcode:2001Sci...293.2248G. doi:10.1126/science.1061967. PMID 11567137.
8. Time Magazine's article about West
9. World Knowledge Dialogue
10. Geoffrey West's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
11. List of publications from Microsoft Academic
12. Geoffrey West publications in Google Scholar
13. 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.

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
• "Dr. West's work on the origin of biological scaling laws featured on PBS NOVA on YouTube