![]() A native of London, West has thrived since being transplanted to the arid soil of New Mexico decades ago. ![]() This is the sort of question West has asked often over the past 20 years, ever since a mix of midlife angst and fickle federal funding prompted him to shift his focus from high-energy particle physics to an exploration of biology and social systems. “I tried to explain to him that these sessions are supposed to be fringe, provocative, but he was really not happy.” West concedes that posing this query to a company founder is like asking when she thinks her firstborn child will die. “Boy, he was really upset, not happy at all,” recalls West, a physicist and past president of the Santa Fe Institute. ![]() The cofounder of the company was not pleased. ![]() If you want to stay chummy with Larry Page, don’t ask, “When do you think Google will die?” Geoffrey West wrote that question on a whiteboard at Sci Foo, an annual confab of the digerati that Google co-sponsors, in August 2011. ![]()
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