ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the use of computer networks in four disciplines: mathematics, physics, chemistry, and experimental biology. Mathematicians incorporate networks into a cycle of collaboration that generally begins with a face-to-face meeting during a visiting position or at a conference. This meeting allows intensive interaction to determine the potential for a fruitful collaboration and to develop the shared intuition that respondents argued was necessary for sharing mathematics ideas. High-energy physics experiments require elaborate equipment costing millions of dollars and requiring years to design, build, set up, and test, with more years required to collect and analyze the data. Chemistry is perhaps the largest discipline of the natural sciences. One factor that may contribute to the low level of network use in chemistry is that networks tend to spread information. Electronic communication in chemistry and experimental biology seems largely limited to using online bibliographic databases, such as Chemical Abstracts, or using online genetic or protein databases, such as GenBank.
