Loet Leydesdorff: Recipient of the 2003 Derek de Solla Price Award

摘要

When I was asked to deliver this laudatio I thought 'piece of cake', this speech will organize itself: it will be a self-organizing event. The hard truth of course is that words in Dr. Leydesdorff s publications do not always mean what they seem to mean at first sight, and my brain, the most personal of all neural networks, needs some training before anything gets organized. Loet Leydesdorff and I first met during the very first conference on scientometrics and informetrics at Diepenbeek (Belgium) in 1987. His talk, entitled "Co-words and citation relations between document sets and environments" (LEYDESDORFF, 1988) drew my attention and I had occasion later to cite the corresponding article published in the conference proceedings (AHLGREN et al., 2003). What, however, made the biggest impression on me, and many other conference participants, was his warm laugh. It was always very easy to find Loet: one just had to listen carefully, and one could immediately locate him.