In human physics, Harry Eugene Stanley (1941-), commonly cited as "H. Eugene Stanley", is an American physicist noted for having coined the term “econophysics” in 1995, to denote the field of physics dealing with economic phenomenon, and for research and various publications in this field.

His group supposedly found empirical laws governing economic fluctuations, and proposed statistical mechanics models to explain their origins.

Stanley is said to have introduced the term "econophysics" at the 1995 second Statphys-Kolkata conference in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India, to describe the large number of papers written by physicists in the problems of stock markets. [1]

Stanley co-authored the 2000 Introduction to Econophysics with Italian econophysicist Rosario Mantegna. [2]

Random walks
In 2011, Stanley co-authored The Physics of Foraging, together with Gandhimohan Viswanathan, Marcos Luz, and Ernesto Raposo, on random walk theory applied to insects with implication to humans, which has the following abstract:

"Do the movements of animals, including humans, follow patterns that can be described quantitatively by simple laws of motion? If so, then why? These questions have attracted the attention of scientists in many disciplines, and stimulated debates ranging from ecological matters to queries such as 'how can there be free will if one follows a law of motion?' This is the first book on this rapidly evolving subject, introducing random searches and foraging in a way that can be understood by readers without a previous background on the subject. It reviews theory as well as experiment, addresses open problems and perspectives, and discusses applications ranging from the colonization of Madagascar by Austronesians to the diffusion of genetically modified crops. The book will interest physicists working in the field of anomalous diffusion and movement ecology as well as ecologists already familiar with the concepts and methods of statistical physics."

The book has interesting sections such as “Power Laws and Pareto’s principle” (4.3), “GPS tracking of humans” (7.3), “Energy and Entropy” (10.4), “Determinism, Randomness, and Free Will” (14.4), among others.


Left: Stanley's co-authored 2000 An Introduction to Econophysics, one of the first books in econophysics. [2] Right: Stanley's co-authored 2011 book The Physics of Foraging, which applies random walk theory to explain searching and exploration behavior of humans. [3]

Left: Stanley's co-authored 2000 An Introduction to Econophysics, one of the first books in econophysics. [2] Right: Stanley's co-authored 2011 book The Physics of Foraging, which applies random walk theory to explain searching and exploration behavior of humans. [3]

Influence
Stanley’s work in econophysics was one of the stimulators for German theoretical physicist Dietrich Stauffer to enter into the field of econophysics.

Quotes
The following are noted quotes by Stanley:

“Obviously, you can’t predict the future, but, such research reveals how physicists and economists should compare notes in the future.”
— Eugene Stanley (2000), Dallas Morning News [4]

References
1. Goldwater, Richard and Jonath, Arthur. (2009). “Saving Capitalism from Finance: the Power of Thermoeconomics.” 27-pgs. ProfitandEntropy.com.
2. Mantegna, Rosario, and Stanley, H. Eugene. (2000). Introduction to Econophysics: Correlations and Complexity in Finance. Cambridge University Press.
3. Gandhimohan,Viswanathan, Luz, Marcos, Raposos, Ernesto, and Stanley, Eugene. (2011). The Physics of Foraging: an Introduction to Random Searches and Biological Encounters. Cambridge.
4. Savoiu, Gheorghe. (2012). Econophysics: Background and Applications in Economics, Finance, and Sociophysics (pg. 3). American Institute of Physics.

External links
● H. Eugene Stanley – Wikipedia.