Derek DeSolla Price

Derek de Solla Price

Derek DeSolla Price (1922-1983) was an English historian of science.

Bernard M. Fry (far left)

Life

Derek John DeSolla Price was born on January 22, 1922 in Leyton, a suburb of London. He earned a B.A. with honors in physics and mathematics from the University of London in 1942. then worked on wartime research projects. He received a Ph.D. in experimental physics at the University of London in 1946. In 1948, he began teaching at Raffles College, which became part of the National University of Singapore. There he read a set of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and became aware of the evolutionary nature and the historical aspects of science and technology. He also developed his theory of the exponential growth of scientific literature.

Price returned to England and obtained a second doctorate, in the history of science, from Cambridge University in 1954. He worked at Princeton and the Smithsonian Institution before he secured a professorship at Yale University. In 1961 he was named chair of a new department which encompassed the histories of science, technology and medicine.

In the prospectus for the new department, Price elaborated on the exponential growth of scientific literature and tied it to the increased number of indexing and abstracting services. "He also predicted or advanced the notion of relating fields of scholarly activity via interactive communication patterns. He suggested that...relationships within and among disciplinary literatures can be identified and measured via their mode and degree of citation to one another. ...Price was the father (certainly one of the fathers) of what is now known and pursued as bibliometrics." (DALB, Supp.Vol. p.100)

In a posthumous, expanded version of Price's 1963 book Little Science, Big Science [titled Little Science, Big Science ... and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), Eugene Garfield and Robert Merton lauded Price: "we can hardly doubt that with this book and the papers which followed it ... Derek John De Solla Price takes his place as the father of Scientometrics." [scientometrics is bibliometrics applied to scientific literature].

Derek Price died in September 1983.

Publications

• Science since Babylon New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961. A prospectus for the new department at Yale and for his personal goals in the history of science.
• "Networks of Scientific Papers." Science 149(July 30, 1965): 510-515. Reprinted in Kochen, The Growth of Knowledge. Huntington, NY: R.E. Krieger (Wiley), 1967.
• Little Science, Big Science (1963). A set of lectures on the "science of science."
• JASIS, 27(5); 1976. RE: cumulative advantage processes (Kochen says these became permanent and central topics after this article)

Contributions

Price was the Chair of new department encompassing the histories of science, technology, and medicine at Yale 1961. "One of the fathers of bibliometrics" (DALB). He was called the "father of scientometrics" by Eugene Garfield and Robert Merton. Belver Griffith said "Price's understanding of scientific literature has made major contributions to the management and evaluation of the world's major bibliographic resources and services and to our understanding of the role of recorded knowledge in science." Price wrote Little Science, Big Science (1963) and .

Further reading

• Herner, Saul. "Price, Derek de Solla (1922-1983)." Supplement to the Dictionary of American library biography, ed. by Wayne A. Wiegand. Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1990, pp 98-101.

Papers

LOCATION #1 Centre de Recherche en Histoire des Sciences et des Techniques, cite des Sciences and de L'industrie, 75930 Paris Cedex 19, France.

• Papers dates:
• Size:
• Includes: Personal and professional papers of Price as well as his personal library.
• Finding aid: As of 6/97 Price's papers were not processed and no finding aid exists.
• Source: Correspondence with Andrew Butrica, Historian of Science.