RIP Eugene Garfield (1925–2017)

Eugene Garfield, one of the founders of bibliometrics and scientometrics, died a few days ago.

Garfield contributed a lot to the study of scientific productivity and output, and for better or for worse (often for worse), he gave us the impact factor (which of course has led to many variants).

Advice for Young Scholars

Thanks to Aaron Clauset for anonymizing --- and otherwise editing for public consumption --- the notes from the first of our four panel discussions of advice for young scholars (both within and outside of academia).

The panels were held at the kick-off meeting of the Mathematics Research Community on "Network Science" from almost half a year ago. We framed things with a focus on mathematics, computer science, and networks, but you'll see that most of these things apply much more broadly than that. Please spread this widely, pass along to your research groups and colleagues, etc.

Part 1: the faculty market

Part 2: balancing work and life

Part 3: doing interdisciplinary work

Part 4: grants and fundraising


Finally, here is a a copy of the notes for all four panels.

Note (11/27/14): I will add the links to parts 2–4 once Aaron posts them.

Update (12/03/14): Parts 2–4 are now posted.

Precocious Scholars

On most occasions, I have a bone to pick with Stephen Wolfram, but his blog entry about new Caltech ACM alum Catherine's Beni's pseudo Caltech record for youngest PhD (whether she has the record or not depends on how one does the counting) and his experience as a precocious youth is actually pretty interesting.

I have known people like this (including Catherine, though not well), and I have witnessed firsthand the struggles of some of these people. I have seen things turn out poorly, eventual happy endings, and also ones that worked out well from the very beginning. My experiences were different from theirs, as I started at Caltech at age 18, but in some cases I was around for some of the experiences, and even with my inability to understand what even my best friends are thinking (which gets me into trouble way too much and has caused considerable pain in my own life on multiple occasions), I'd like to think that I have some understanding of precocious scholars because of my interactions with some of them.

Anyway, Wolfram's blog entry is an interesting read.

Update (6/14/11): Here is a Caltech feature about Catherine.