About

Daniel Hook is Chief Scientific Officer at Holtzbrinck, a position he took up in 2026 after a decade as Chief Executive of Digital Science. He is a co-founder of Symplectic, of Dimensions, and of the Research on Research Institute.

He began in 2000, reading for a PhD at Imperial College London while working as a programmer at Monnet. He co-founded Symplectic in 2003 and led it as chief executive for a decade, stepping down in 2013 — three years after an investment from Nature Publishing Group folded it into what became Digital Science. He joined Digital Science as Director of Research Metrics in 2013 and became its chief executive in 2015.

He has kept one foot in the academy throughout: a visiting academic at Imperial College London since 2007, a visiting professor at Washington University in St Louis since 2010, an MBA from the University of Cambridge in 2018, and a Policy Fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy there since 2020.

In 2019 he co-founded the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) and co-chaired it until 2021.

He likes maps (see below), reading about history and playing music.