Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Encyclopedia
Albert-László Barabási (born March 30, 1967) is a physicist, best known for his work in the research of network theory. He is the former Emil T. Hofmann professor at the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...

 and current Distinguished Professor and Director of Northeastern University's Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) and an associate member of the Center of Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University. He introduced in 1999 the concept of scale-free networks and proposed the Barabási–Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 or online communities.

Birth and education

Barabási was born to an ethnic Hungarian family of the Székely
Székely
The Székelys or Székely , sometimes also referred to as Szeklers , are a subgroup of the Hungarian people living mostly in the Székely Land, an ethno-cultural region in eastern Transylvania, Romania...

 community in Cârţa
Cârta, Harghita
Cârţa , is a commune in Romania, located in Harghita County. It lies in the Székely Land, an ethno-cultural region in eastern Transylvania.The commune is composed of two villages:*Cârţa / Karcfalva*Ineu / Csíkjenőfalva...

, Harghita County
Harghita County
Harghita is a county in the center of Romania, in eastern Transylvania, with the county seat at Miercurea-Ciuc.-Demographics:In 2002, it had a population of 326,222 and a population density of 52/km².*Hungarians- 85%...

, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. His father, László, was a museum director, while his mother, Katalin Keresztes, taught literature, and later became director of a children's theater. He attended a high school specializing in science and mathematics; in the 10th grade, he won a local physics olympiad
Physics olympiad
The United States National Physics Olympiad is a competition in physics, usually among high school students, where the participants solve problems and/or perform and analyze experiments...

. Between 1986 and 1989, he studied physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 and engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...

 at the University of Bucharest
University of Bucharest
The University of Bucharest , in Romania, is a university founded in 1864 by decree of Prince Alexander John Cuza to convert the former Saint Sava Academy into the current University of Bucharest.-Presentation:...

; during that time, he began doing research on chaos theory
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...

, publishing 3 papers.

In 1989, Barabási emigrated to Hungary, together with his father. In 1991, he took a master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, before enrolling in the Physics program at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...

, where he earned a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in 1994, under the direction of H. Eugene Stanley
H. Eugene Stanley
Harry Eugene Stanley is an American physicist and University Professor at Boston University. He has made seminal contributions to statistical physics and is one of the pioneers of interdisciplinary science...

.

Academic career

After a one-year postdoc at the IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

 Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Thomas J. Watson Research Center
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for the IBM Research Division.The center is on three sites, with the main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, 38 miles north of New York City, a building in Hawthorne, New York, and offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts.- Overview :The...

, Barabási joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1995. In 2000, at the age of 32, he was named the Emil T. Hofman Professor of Physics, becoming the youngest endowed professor. In 2004 he founded the Center for Complex Network Research. In 2005-2006 he was a Visiting Professor at Harvard University. In Fall, 2007, Barabási left Notre Dame to become the Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Network Science at Northeastern University and to take up an appointment in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

As of 2008, Barabási is a Hungarian, Romanian and a U.S citizen.

Research and achievements

Barabási has been a major contributor to the development of network theory and research, together with others from the social sciences, physics, mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...

, and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

. His biggest role has been the introduction of the scale-free network
Scale-free network
A scale-free network is a network whose degree distribution follows a power law, at least asymptotically. That is, the fraction P of nodes in the network having k connections to other nodes goes for large values of k as...

concept. Among the topics in network theory that Barabási has studied are growth and preferential attachment
Preferential attachment
A preferential attachment process is any of a class of processes in which some quantity, typically some form of wealth or credit, is distributed among a number of individuals or objects according to how much they already have, so that those who are already wealthy receive more than those who are not...

, the mechanisms probably responsible in part for the structure of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

 or the cell
Cell (biology)
The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is often called the building block of life. The Alberts text discusses how the "cellular building blocks" move to shape developing embryos....

. According to the review of one of Barabási's books, preferential attachment can be described as follows:
"Barabási has found that the websites that form the network (of the WWW) have certain mathematical properties. The conditions for these properties to occur are threefold. The first is that the network has to be expanding, growing. This precondition of growth is very important as the idea of emergence comes with it. It is constantly evolving and adapting. That condition exists markedly with the world wide web. The second is the condition of preferential attachment, that is, nodes (websites) will wish to link themselves to hubs (websites) with the most connections. The third condition is what is termed competitive fitness which in network terms means its rate of attraction."

Awards

Barabási is a Fellow of the American Physical Society
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...

. In 2005 he was awarded the FEBS Anniversary Prize for Systems Biology and in 2006 he was awarded the John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...

 Medal by the John von Neumann Computer Society from Hungary, for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology. In 2004 he was elected external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...

 and in 2007 into the Academia Europaea
Academia Europaea
Academia Europæa is a European non-governmental scientific academy founded in 1988. Its members are scientists and scholars who collectively aim to promote learning, education and research. It publishes European Review through Cambridge Journals....

.. In 2008 he received the 2008 C&C Prize
C&C Prize
C&C Prizes is an award given by the NEC Corporation "in recognition of outstanding contributions to research and development and/or pioneering work in the fields of semiconductors, computers, telecommunications and their integrated technologies." Established in 1985, through the NEC's nonprofit...

 "for stimulating innovative research on networks and discovering that the scale-free property is a common feature of various real-world complex networks" and the Cozzarelli Prize, National Academies of Sciences, USA
The Lagrange Prize-Crt Foundation was awarded to Barabási in June 2011, and in November 2011 he was awarded Honorary degree
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...

 Doctor Honoris Causa by Technical University of Madrid
Technical University of Madrid
The Technical University of Madrid or sometimes called Polytechnic University of Madrid is a Spanish University, located in Madrid. It was founded in 1971 as the result of merging different Technical Schools of Engineering and Architecture, originated mainly in the 18th century...


.

Trivia

Barabási has Bacon number  one, as he appears in Connected , a documentary about complex networks, together with Kevin Bacon.

Selected publications

  • Barabási, Albert-László, Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do, April 29, 2010. ISBN 0-525-95160-1 (hardcover)
  • Barabási, Albert-László, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What it Means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life, 2002. ISBN 0-452-28439-2 (pbk)
  • Barabási, Albert-László and Réka Albert, "Emergence of scaling in random networks", Science, 286:509-512, October 15, 1999
  • Barabási, Albert-László and Zoltán Oltvai, "Network Biology", Nature Reviews Genetics
    Nature Reviews Genetics
    Nature Reviews Genetics is a monthly review journal in genetics and covers the full breadth of modern genetics. The journal publishes review and perspective articles written by experts in the field subject to peer review and copy editing to provide authoritative coverage of topics...

    5, 101-113 (2004)
  • Barabási, Albert-László, Mark Newman and Duncan J. Watts
    Duncan J. Watts
    Duncan J. Watts is an Australian researcher and a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he directs the Human Social Dynamics group. He is also a past external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute and a former professor of sociology at Columbia University, where he headed the...

    , The Structure and Dynamics of Networks, 2006. ISBN 0-691-11357-2

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK