David Price (mineral physicist)

Price was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to science and research.

In the foreword to the 2019 UCL Research Strategy, Price wrote: “Regrettably, the key question for our generation of researchers has become: ‘How will society survive to the 22nd century?’ By survival, we do not mean simply the continued existence of the human race, but also of the environments, institutions, structures and values that underpin and enhance society and enable humanity to thrive. We also recognise the profound imperative to tackle the persistent injustices and inequalities in society today, and to help to deliver a more equitable future for all of humanity. … UCL is well-positioned to make major contributions to help humanity survive and prosper. This is due not least to our distinctive ability to sustain a breadth, depth and diversity of expertise and research across disciplines and methods. The purpose of this strategy is to enable UCL’s individual researchers and our research community as a whole to maximise their contribution to public good. I believe this also requires us to consider: how our research environment supports our researchers, both as individuals and collectively; the cultural and structural barriers we may need to overcome to achieve our ambitions; and how we can redefine traditional concepts of leadership, collaboration and research impact to reflect, enable and drive the vision, aims and objectives set out in this strategy."

After publication of the 2011 version of the UCL Research Strategy, Times Higher Education described Price as asserting that, "since the Thatcher era, universities had adopted the prevailing political view of them as "the engines of the knowledge economy," leading them to neglect wisdom, which he defined as "the judicious application of knowledge for the good of humanity". He cited the huge increase in maize prices prompted by the staple food crop's use as a source of biofuel as a "classic case of the application of very clever knowledge without developing a wise way of introducing it". The problem, he said, was that few universities possessed the breadth of top researchers necessary to generate wisdom, which required the "synthesising and contrasting of the knowledge, perspectives and methodologies of different disciplines"."

Price has led the development of three iterations of the UCL Research Strategy, in 2008, 2011 and 2019.

In 2008, Price devised and introduced the first-ever UCL research strategy, Maximizing Impact and Influence Globally. It stated: “[I]n the recent past, universities have not been seen major forces for social change. UCL’s new research strategy will help realise the radical vision of its founders, who, following [Jeremy] Bentham, believed that education, and hence universities, were the key to reform. … With its unique strengths and position, UCL has an opportunity and an obligation to develop and disseminate original knowledge to help provide solutions to the grand challenges faced by the world today and tomorrow.”

In 1983, Price became a Royal Society University Research Fellow at UCL, where he has since held a variety of academic and management positions. He discovered the mineral wadsleyite, which is believed to make up part of the transition zone of the Earth’s mantle, from a depth of 400 km to 550 km.

From 1977 to 1980, he was a Natural Environment Research Council Research Student at the University of Cambridge, and received a PhD in 1981; his doctoral thesis was entitled Aspects of Transformation Behaviour in Olivine, Pyroxenes and Titanomagnetites. From 1980 to 1981, Price was a Fulbright-Hayes Scholar and Research Associate at the University of Chicago’s Department of the Geophysical Sciences, and, from 1981 to 1983, a Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge and Natural Environment Research Council Research Fellow, University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences.

Price is the son of the geologist Neville J. Price. In 1974, prior to going to university, Price was an Assistant Scientific Officer at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK, researching dispersive Fourier transform spectroscopy. At the University of Cambridge, Price read Natural Sciences and graduated with a 1st Class Honours Bachelor of Arts from Clare College in 1977.

Geoffrey David Price OBE FGS (born 12 January 1956) has been Vice-Provost (Research) of UCL (University College London) since 2007 and Professor of Mineral Physics in the UCL Department of Earth Sciences since 1991. Price is responsible for promoting, supporting and facilitating UCL research, including securing the highest-quality research outputs across UCL, and leading the development and implementation of the UCL Research Strategy.