Derek de Solla Price

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Derek de Solla Price with a model of the Antikythera Mechanism

Derek John de Solla Price (born January 22, 1922 in Leyton , Great Britain , † September 3, 1983 ) was a British historian of science.

He is considered to be the co-founder of scientometry , the quantitative measurement of science. Scientometry is a branch of science research . As " Avalon Professor " for the history of science at Yale University , he developed the measurement of the content and effect of the subject of science itself. From the consideration that published science (in the form of publications ) both in quantity (number of publications, number of Citations) as well as in quality (economic impact, influence on other areas of knowledge), various methods for analyzing scientific outputs were developed through Price initiated.

Life

John Price received his doctorate in experimental physics from the University of London in 1946. After a three-year stay at Raffles College in Singapore , he returned to England and did another doctorate, now in the history of science. He subsequently moved to Princeton and also worked for the Smithsonian Institute . Finally he went to Yale, where he stayed until his death and mainly dealt with the connections and the mutual influence of different scientific publications on one another ("Networks of scientific papers"). There he was awarded the title of Avalon Professor of Science History in 1959.

Price is best known for studying the Antikythera Mechanism . He analyzed its function, including through the use of X-ray photography , and made a first attempt at reconstruction. In 1976 he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal , the highly renowned prize for the history of technology from the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) founded by Melvin Kranzberg .

Little Science, Big Science

Derek de Solla Price is considered to be the founder of scientometry, which essentially goes back to his book Little Science, Big Science , published in 1963 . In it, he describes, among other things, the exponential increase in scientific publications ( information explosion ) as well as the distribution and half-life of citations .

Others

Since 1984, Scientometrics magazine has presented the Derek John de Solla Price Award to scientists who have made significant contributions in the field of quantitative science research.

Selected publications

Books

  • To Old Palmistry. Being the earliest known Book of Palmistry in English. Edited from Bodleian MS Digby roll IV. Heffer, Cambridge 1953.
  • The Equatorie of the Planetis. Edited from Peterhouse M 75.1. With a linguistic analysis by RM Wilson. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1955.
  • with Joseph Needham and Wang Ling: Heavenly Clockwork. The Great Astronomical Clocks of Medieval China (= Antiquarian Horological Society Mongraph. 1, ISSN  0518-0333 ). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1960.
  • Science Since Babylon. Yale University Press, New Haven CT 1961.
  • Little Science, Big Science. Columbia University Press, New York NY et al. 1963, (German: Little Science, Big Science. Von der Studierstube zur Großforschung (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. 48). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1974, ISBN 3-518-07648-5 ) .
  • Gears From the Greeks. The Antikythera Mechanism. A Calendar Computer from approx. 80 BC (= Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. NS Vol. 64, No. 7). American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia PA 1974, ISBN 0-87169-647-9 .
  • as editor with Ina Spiegel-Rösing: Science, Technology and Society. A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective. Sage Publications, London et al. 1977, ISBN 0-8039-9858-9 .

items

  • Networks of scientific papers. In: Science . Vol. 149, No. 3683, 1965, pp. 510-515, doi : 10.1126 / science.149.3683.510 .
  • Citation Measures of Hard Science, Soft Science, Technology, and Nonscience. In: Carnot E. Nelson, Donald K. Pollock (Eds.): Communications Among Scientists and Engineers. Lexington Books - DC Heath and Company, Lexington 1970, pp. 3-22.
  • A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processes. In: Journal of the American Society for Information Science. Vol. 27, No. 5, 1976, ISSN  0002-8231 , pp. 292-306, doi : 10.1002 / asi.4630270505 .

literature

  • Susan Crawford: Derek John de Solla Price (1922-1983): The man and the contribution. In: Bulletin of the Medical Library Association. Vol. 72, No. 2, 1984, ISSN  1536-5050 , pp. 238-239, PMC 227421 (free full text), (obituary).
  • BC Griffith: Derek Price (1922-1983) and the social studies of science. In: Scientometrics. Vol. 6, No. 1, 1984, ISSN  0138-9130 , pp. 5-7, doi : 10.1007 / BF02020108 .
  • Gerard L'e. Turner: Obituary Derek John de Solla Price 1922-1983. In: Annals of Science. Vol. 41, No. 2, 1984, ISSN  0003-3790 , pp. 105-107, doi : 10.1080 / 00033798400200431 .
  • Donald deB. Beaver: Eloge. Derek John deSolla Price (January 22, 1922 - September 3, 1983). In: Isis . Vol. 76, No. 3, 1985, pp. 371-374, JSTOR 232859 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Society for the History of Technology ( Memento of the original of July 18, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The Leonardo da Vinci Medal, description and list of the winners  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.historyoftechnology.org
personal data
SURNAME Price, Derek de Solla
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Price, Derek John de Solla (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British scientist, founder of scientometry
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Leyton (London)
DATE OF DEATH 3rd September 1983