Derek J. de Solla Price

Derek John de Solla Price (January 22, 1922 – September, 1983) was a science historian and information scientist, credited as the father of scientometrics. Price was born in Leyton, England. He studied Physics and Mathematics at the University of London. He obtained two Ph.D. degrees: one in experimental physics from the University of London in 1946, and one in the history of science, from Cambridge University. Price worked at Raffles College what is now the University of Singapore (1948). After obtaining his second doctorate, he moved to the States where he worked at Princeton and the Smithsonian Institution. At his next post, Yale, where he worked until his death, he was appointed as the Avalon professor of history of science, and served as chair of a new department that encompassed the histories of science, technology, and medicine. In 1984 Price received, posthumously, the ASIS Research Award for outstanding contributions in the field of information science.

His scientific contributions include

• the establishment of scientometrics through his study of the exponential growth of science and the half-life of scientific literature (Price 1963),
• the examination of interactive communication patterns of scientists (Price 1965), and
• his interpretation of Herbert Simon's theory on cumulative advantage processes (Price 1976).

Price is also known for his study of the Antikythera mechanism.

Seminal Publications

• Derek J. de Solla Price (1961). Science since Babylon. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Derek J. de Solla Price (1963). Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Derek J. de Solla Price (1965). Networks of Scientific Papers. Science, 149(3683):510-515, (July 30).
• Derek J. de Solla Price (1976). A general theory of bibliometric and other cumulative advantage processes. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 27:292-306. (1976 JASIS paper award).

References

• American Society of Information Science and Technology Derek DeSolla Price.
• Derek de Solla Price (1983). This Week's Citation Classic: Little Science, Big Science. ISI. Current Contents 29:18 (July).