A tribute to Derek John de Solla Price: A bold ...

Essays of an Information Scientist, Vol:7, p.213-217, 1984
Current Contents, #28, p.3-7, July 9, 1984

I A Tribute to Derek John de Soiia Price:
A Bold, Iconoclastic Historian of Science

Number28 JuIY9,1984

On September 3, 1983, Derek John de in Current Content.@ (CP ) on at least
Solla Price died suddenly in London. He two occasions. 1,2I am equally glad that I
had been visiting with our mutual friend pressed him to do a commentary on his
and colleague, Anthony Michaefis, edi- classic, Little Science, Big Science.4
tor of Interdisciplinary Science Revie ws.
When I heard of Derek’s death, I won- Numerous tributes to Derek Price
dered why he had taken the risk of flying have already been published by col-
to London so soon after recovering from leagues who knew him or his work. Bef-
major surgery for an aneurysm. But at a ver Griffith, Drexel University School of
memorial ceremony at Yale University, Library and Information Science, has
his son Mark suggested that it could not praised Dereks contributions to our un-
have been otherwise. It would have been derstanding of the role of science in soci-
out of character for Derek to refrain ety. s Manfred Kochen, University of
from pursuing his work and interests. He Michigan, Ann Arbor, provides a brief
is survived by his wife, Ellen; sons, Mark review of Derek’s career, and credits his
and Jeffrey; daughter, Linda DeMi- influence upon the entire first genera-
chelle; sister, Joan Cravitz; and three tion of information scientists.6 Douglas
grandchildren. H. Shaffer, editor, National Association
of Watch and Clock Collectors Bu[[etin,
For me, perhaps one of the most re- praised Price’s contributions to the field
grettable aspects of Derek’s untimely of horology,7 the science of measuring
death is the lost opportunity to have co- time. Susan Crawford, Medical Library
authored a book or paper with him. But Association, wrote of Price’s work on
it would do no good to be lugubrious the problems of information handling.g
about this matter. Death becomes more And in a moving tribute, Alan Mackay,
prevalent as one grows older and accu- Department of Crystallography, Birk-
mulates colleagues the world over. That beck College, University of London, de-
is a price scholars must pay for the privi- scribed the multifaceted nature of
lege of acceptance into an invisible col- Price’s talent. In an oblique reference to
lege. But, somehow, we survive these the streak of iconoclasm which Derek
traumas. However, the loss of a friend possessed, Mackay wrote: “[We] will re-
such as Derek Price, who was more like member Derek in h~ accustomed role of
a brother to me than a colleague, de- expositor of the prospects for the future,
mands some special attention. Although the stupidities of the present and of the
offering him thk posthumous recogni- treasures of the past .“9
tion is important to me, it is gratifying to
know that Derek was alive to read the I was asked to write a brief eulogy to
special tributes to hm which I published Derek for the first issue of Information
Today in November 1983.10 Along with

213

many of his friends, I was also asked to lpplied mathematics at Raffles College
contribute an article to a~e$t.rchn~t issue ‘now the University of Singapore) in
of Scientometrics, to be published next J4alaya.
year. That article discusses the multidis-
ciplinary influence of Little Science, Big His stay at Raffles was a pivotal point
Science. 11 In these and other publica- m his career. First, it was during this
tions, I have often spoken of Derek’s pi- time that Price made his now-famous
oneering role. He uniquely brought to- discoveries about the exponential
gether the history of science, sciento- growth of science. The college had ac-
metrics, and information science, and quired a complete set of the Hzilosophi-
made an enormous impact on scientific cal Transactions of the Royal Society of
communication. In none of these in- London, which had its inception in 1665.
stances, however, was I able to fully cov- Price stored the bound volumes in his
er the many facets of his creativity. That home while the college library was under
would take a long-term, collaborative construction. Taking the opportunity to
effort by a multidisciplinary research read them cover-to-cover—and thereby
team which would include some of his gaining his initial education in the
close colleagues. So what follows will history of science—he noticed that the
discuss an often-overlooked aspect of chronologically stacked volumes formed
Derek’s scholarship: his passion for sci- an exponential curve against the wall.
entific apparatus and his work showing Surveying all the other sets of journals
the importance of technology and meth- he could find, Price found that exponen-
odology in the advancement of science. tial growth was an apparently universal
phenomenon in the scientific literature.
Derek Price was best known, of He gave a paper presenting his observa-
course, for his work in scientometrics tions to the Sixth International Congress
and the history of science, for which he for the History of Science in Amsterdam
received a second doctorate in 1954 in 1950, IS This paper marked his transi-
from the University of Cambridge. But tion from physics and mathematics to
his scientific contributions have not the history of science. Although the
been limited to those fields. His early paper was initially ill-received (in
papers, for instance, were in mathemat- Dereks words, “It went over like a lead
ics and theoretical and experimental balloon”), Price nevertheless entered
physics. Indeed, he had earned his first Cambridge to pursue a doctorate in his
doctorate in experimental physics in newly chosen field.
1947 from the University of London. His
lifelong interest, however, was in scien- Price’s stay in Singapore also led him
tific instruments and hardware. to develop an interest in Oriental cul-
ture. When he was made honorary cura-
Born in Leyton, a northeast London tor of Cambridge’s Whipple Museum of
suburb, Price was educated in British Antique Scientific Instruments, this in-
state schools. His early inclination to- terest led him to collaborate with Joseph
ward science was derived, at least in Needham and Wang Ling on a book and
part, from a steady diet of science fiction a paper covering the history of medieval
“pulp” magazines. He expanded his sci- Chinese clockwork. 1415 Published in
entific horizons during World War II, as- Nature in 1956, the paper stated, “The
sisting in military research on optical invention of the mechanical clock was
characteristics of hot and molten met- one of the most important points in the
als. 12 He also taught college-level sci- history of science and technology,” al-
ence courses for armed services training lowing for the first time the accurate
programs. In 1947, degree in hand, he measurement of processes over time. 14
accepted a three-year position teaching The then accepted view was that me-

214

chanical timekeepers, powered by a fall- history of science. Its posthumous publi-
ing weight, were an innovation devel- cation in Natural History led me to re-
oped in Europe in the early fourteenth flect on what may have been one of his
century. However, Price and colleagues,
among others, demonstrated that the most important messages, suggesting
Chinese tradition of water-powered that instrumentation has been of far
astronomical clockwork directly con- greater importance in the history of sci-
tributed to the development of late me- entific achievement than has been sus-
dieval European mechanical clocks. pected. An extensive quote from the ar-
ticle follows:
Price made an important discovery by
accident some years earlier while writing During the golden age of exper-
his thesis on the history of scientific in- imental physics early in this century,
struments. Carefufly sifting through me- all progress seemed to depend on a
dieval literature, he stumbled upon a band of ingenious craftsmen with
Middle English manuscript by English brains in their fingertips, who exploit-
poet Geoffrey Chaucer. It described the ed a great many little-known proper-
construction of an instrument for calcu- ties of materials and other tricks of the
lating planetary motions. Price identi- trade. These tricks not only made all
fied the beautifully handwritten paper as the difference in what could or could
a companion piece to Chaucer’s 1391 not be done in the laboratory; to a
Treatise on the Astrolabe. He then large extent, they determined what
proved it to be the poet’s draft manu- was discovered . . ..
script, the only extensive piece in
Chaucer’s own hand known to exist. lb, 17 The flavor and tradition of this ex-
perimentation are markedly different
One of Derek’s proudest achieve- from, and perhaps even in conflict
ments, however, was the solution to the with, the standard view of the role of
problem of the Greek Antikythera experiment in science . . ..
mechanism. An artifact of the first cen-
tury BC, it was salvaged by the first un- The standard view.. is that the sci-
derwater archaeological expedition in entist creates hypotheses and sends
history in 1900. The mechanism featured them out to be tested by making a trial
prominently in all accounts of the histo- of the prescribed ‘experiment.’ Her-
ry of scientific instruments as the earliest bert Butterfield and Thomas Kuhn
known example of a “technological” have described the inspired thought
tool, but its function was unknown, that leads to great and revolutionary
since it was encrusted within a mass of changes in science as ‘shifts in para-
coral, shells, and other debris. Using the digm.’ According to this view, the
technique of gamma-radiology, how- thought is what’s important; laborato-
ever, Price was able to photograph the ry instruments.. exist only to confirm
intenor of the corroded mass. A pains- or invalidate what the thinker has hy-
taking analysis showed the existence of pothesized.
differential gears. This proved that the
Antikythera mechanism was a mechani- What actually goes on in laborato-
cal calendar exhibiting a level of sophis- ries is of a different nature. Since the
tication and refinement not previously seventeenth century., .expenment has
thought possible in such an early cul- more often meant ‘experience’ in the
ture. 18-20 use of various techniques. The idea is
to find out what will happen when you
Derek’s last paper, “Of sealing wax try certain techniques, and the hope is
and string, “21 combined his love of sci. that in finding out, you will discover
entific apparatus with his expertise in the facts of nature that fall outside the
range of what was known before. The
procedure is far from being cut-and-
dried, and the theoreticians and ex-
perimenters far from being in the mas-
ter/servant relationship in which they
are usually cast.,.. Skilled experi-
menters are masters of a.. crucially
important technology. Their work is

215

at the core of high technology and rep- how unusual each of them is. When the
resents a tradition that is autonomous
and did not arise from the cognitive number is reduced by another order of
core of $cience, but from other tech-
nologies devised for quite different magnitude, and the discussion confined
purposes. Much more often than is
commonly believed, the expetiment- to the 10,000 or so most influential scien-
er’s craft is the force that moves sci-
ence forward. tists—including some like Derek

By now, a considerable literature on Price—we realize even more fully how
the importance of methodology and
technology in the advancement of the unusual such persons are.
scientific enterprise has accumulated. In
our discussions of highly cited papers, There will never be another Derek
we have emphasized that citation analy-
sis highlights the importance of new or Price. It is good to know that others will
improved methods or instruments. Ev-
ery list of highly cited papers includes a go on to help illuminate the paradigms
sizable group dealing with new or im-
proved techniques for analysis. Hun- he established. But no one is in a posi-
dreds of the Citation Classics ‘“ we have
published illustrate this point. Unfortu- tion to continue the projects that were
nately, we do not yet have any systemat-
ic data or analyses that would permit one uniquely Ms, to carry on where he left
to draw major science policy conces-
sions. Have we, in fact, given appropri- off. Derek himself acknowledged that
ate priority to those seeking support to
produce new methods? Or must these he, like hundreds of other scholars, had
techniques be smuggled in under the
cloak of basic research? not sufficiently sought or trained candi-

Without making invidious compari- dates for his own replacement. If the Na-
sons between the intellectual value of
theoretical or conceptual research and tional Science Foundation or some other
that of instrumentation or methodology,
there is a bias in the way the public and body were to manage science as one tries
the press perceive these two interacting
phenomena. And in fact, scientists to manage a large institution or corpora-
themselves often use denigrating termi-
nology when speaking of “mere” meth- tion, this important matter of intellectu-
odology, or “mere” technique, or
“mere” equipment. However, Derek al succession would be given more sen-
Price produced incontrovertible evi-
dence that technology and methodology ous attention.
open up entirely new areas of science.
I have no doubt that the crowning mo-
The mind and talent of Derek Price
were unique. Consider the size of the ment of Derek’s career was his election,
worldwide scientific enterprise: at least a
million scientists are involved in re- just before his death, to the Royal Swed-
search. Even when we limit discussion to
the 100,000 or fewer who contribute the ish Academy of Science. He wrote to me
bulk of new knowledge, it is remarkable
about this with obvious glee and pride.

He planned to begin a systematic proce-

dure for nominating candidates for the

Nobel prize. His membership entitled

hlm to this privilege. ThB was not a trivi-

al challenge, but I am sure he would

have met it admirably. And we both

knew the pitfalls of citation analysis well

enough to use the data wisely.

Derek Price was one of the most ar-

dent supporters of the use of unobtru-

sive methods for identifying significant

science. He was often overly zealous in

what he had to say on these matters, as

any of us who knew him personally had

many an occasion to discover. But as

with so many of his pronouncements, he

always seemed to succeed in drawing at-

tention to ideas and problems that may

otherwise have lain fallow. And al-

though his provocative style and brava-

do caused many a raised eyebrow, when-

ever he was caught in an outrageous

216

simile or metaphor, he happily correct- and, later, Henry Small and others at
ed himself. When the definitive biogra- ISI@ , We both served as founding edi-
phy of Derek Price is written, it will sure- tors of .%ientometn”cs, together wi-th V.
ly note his flair for the dramatic. V. Nalimov and others. That journal has
now established the Derek Price Medal
Derek wrote so much that was original to help perpetuate the memory of this
and that truly mattered that it would be a gifted person. Whale preparing thk trib-
life’s work to separate what had ulti- ute to Derek, I was informed that I
mately proven right from the rest. The would be the first recipient of the medal
main point is that he got everyone’s in- bearing his name. This medal will always
tellectual juices flowing. And, to say the be symbolic to me of the special relation-
least, that was always exhilarating. The ship Derek and I shared.
loss of this exciting and dynamic man, of
his ideas and his contributions, is one *****
that will be felt not just by his friends,
but by the whole scientific community. My thanks to Stephen A. Bonaduce

Mackay, in particular, stressed and Bel[a Teperov for their help in the
Derek’s role as a member of the Advi-
sory Board of the Science Citation In- preparation of this essay.
dex”, and his close association with me

e19a4 1s1

REFERENCES

1. Garfield E. Price’s citation cycle. Essays of an information scienlist, Phfladelphm: 1S1Press, 1981.
Vol. 4. p, 618-33.

2. --------------- J.D. Bernak-the sage of Cambridge. 4S award memorialiis his contributions to the
social stud]es of science. Jlkays of an information $cienti$t. Philadelphia: 1S1Press, 1983,
vol.5. p. 511-23,

3. Prfce D J D. Citation Classic. Commentary on Little science, big science.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.118 p.
Current Contents/Social & Beha.ioml Sciences 15(29): 18, 18 July 1983.

4. ---------------- Little science, big science. New York: Columbia University Press, 1%3. 118p.
5. GrJJ91thB C. Derek Price (1922-1983)and the social studies of science.

Scientometn’cs 6(1 ):5-7, 1984.
6. Kochen M. Toward a paradigm for information science: the influence of Derek de SoOa Price.

J. Amer. Sot. Jnform. Sri. 35(3): 147-8, f984.
7. Shaffer D H. In recognition of greatness. Nat, Assn. Watch Clock Collectors Bull. 25:545, 1983.
8. Crawford S. Derek John de Solla Price (1922-1983): the man and the contribution.

Bull, Med. Libr. Assn. 72(2):238-9, 1984.
9. M~ckay A. Derek John de Solla Price: an appreciation, Sot. Stud. Sci. 14(2):315-20, 1984.
10. Gmffeld E. In memoriam. Inform. Today November 1983, p. 31. (Premiere issue.)
11. --------------- A tribute to Derek John de SoUa Price: the impact of Linle science, big science.

Scientometrics (In press. ) 7(3-6):487-503,

f2. Pdce D J D & Lowery H. The emissivit y characteristics of hot metals, with special reference to the
infrared. Bn”t. Iron Steel Res, Assn, Pub\. 7; 523-46, 1943.

13. Price D J D. Quantitative measures of the development of science.
Arch. Inr. Hist. Sci. (14):85-93, 1951.

14. Needham 1, Lfng W & Prkce D J D. Chinese astronomical clockwork. Nature f77:600-2, 1956.
15. ----------------------------------------------- Heavenly clockwork: the great astronomical clocks of medieval

China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.253 p.
16. Prfce D J D. The equatorie of the planetis, (Abstract. ) Bull. Brit. Sot. HiM, Sci. 1:223-6, 1953.
17. ----------------- The eqwton”e of the pkmeti$. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955.214 p,
18. ----------------- An ancient Greek computer. Sci. Amer. 2C0(6):6&7, 1959,
19, ----------------- The Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek computer, Amen’can Philosophical

Socie(y Year Book, 1959. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1960, p. 618-20.
20. ----------------- Gears from the Greeks: the Arrtikythem mechanism, a calendar computer from CO.

80 B.C. PhOadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974.70 p,
2f. ----------------- Of sealing wax and string. Natur. Hist. 84(1):49-56, 1984.

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