physics

Geoffrey West

Geoffrey West is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Geoffrey West rather than just read about it. In short: Geoffrey Brian West (born 15 December 1940) 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 (see also, urban scaling).

Key takeaways

Geoffrey West belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Geoffrey West to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Geoffrey West from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Geoffrey Brian West (born 15 December 1940) 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 (see also, urban scaling). 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, 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 and pursued graduate studies on the pion at Stanford University. 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 and other power laws in biology. West has since been honoured as one of Time magazine's Time 100. He is a member of the World Knowledge Dialogue Scientific Board.

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. 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) 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. S2CID 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" (PDF). Science. 293 (5538): 2248–2251. Bibcode:2001Sci...293.2248G. doi:10.1126/science.1061967. PMID 11567137. S2CID 234618. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 23 April 2015. 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.

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 "Geoffrey West: Scale: The Universal Laws Of Life, Growth & Death In Organisms, Cities & Companies" on YouTube 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

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Geoffrey West

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Geoffrey West claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Geoffrey West before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Geoffrey West ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Geoffrey West

In research: Geoffrey West appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Geoffrey West in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Geoffrey West is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1940 births, Alumni of the University of Cambridge, British theoretical physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Geoffrey West outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Geoffrey West in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Geoffrey West means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Geoffrey West out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Geoffrey West in simple terms?

Why does Geoffrey West matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Geoffrey West?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Geoffrey West.