Duncan J. Watts is an Australian researcher and a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research

Yahoo! Research

Yahoo! Research is a research organization established on January 2004 within Yahoo!. It is currently headed by Prabhakar Raghavan.Topics within Yahoo! Research include: Internet search, Machine Learning, Microeconomics, Media Experience, and Community Systems.Locations include:* Barcelona, Spain*...

, where he directs the Human Social Dynamics group. He is also a past external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute

Santa Fe Institute

The Santa Fe Institute is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems.The Institute houses a...

 and a former professor of sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, where he headed the Collective Dynamics Group. He is author of the book Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age

Six Degrees: the science of a connected age is a popular science book by Duncan J...

and Everything is Obvious * Once You Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails Us (ISBN 978-0385531689).

Life and work

Duncan Watts was born in 1971. He received a B.Sc. in physics from the University of New South Wales

University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

 and a Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

. He describes his research as exploring the "role that network structure plays in determining or constraining system behavior, focusing on a few broad problem areas in social science such as information contagion, financial risk management, and organizational design." Among his many published works he is particularly known for his 1998 paper with Steven Strogatz

Steven Strogatz

Steven Henry Strogatz is an American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University...

 in which the two presented a mathematical theory of the small world phenomenon. More recently he has attracted attention for his modern-day replication of Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram

Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at Yale...

's small world experiment

Small world experiment

The small world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggested that human society is a small world type network...

 using email messages and for his studies of popularity and fads in on-line and other communities.

See also

• Complex network
  Complex network
  In the context of network theory, a complex network is a graph with non-trivial topological features—features that do not occur in simple networks such as lattices or random graphs but often occur in real graphs...
  
  
• Social network
  Social network
  A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
  
  
• Small-world network
  Small-world network
  In mathematics, physics and sociology, a small-world network is a type of mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors of one another, but most nodes can be reached from every other by a small number of hops or steps...
  
  
• Small world experiment
  Small world experiment
  The small world experiment comprised several experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram and other researchers examining the average path length for social networks of people in the United States. The research was groundbreaking in that it suggested that human society is a small world type network...
  
  
• Clustering coefficient
  Clustering coefficient
  In graph theory, a clustering coefficient is a measure of degree to which nodes in a graph tend to cluster together. Evidence suggests that in most real-world networks, and in particular social networks, nodes tend to create tightly knit groups characterised by a relatively high density of ties...
  
  
• Steven Strogatz
  Steven Strogatz
  Steven Henry Strogatz is an American mathematician and the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University...
  
  
• Watts and Strogatz model
  Watts and Strogatz model
  The Watts and Strogatz model is a random graph generation model that produces graphs with small-world properties, including short average path lengths and high clustering. It was proposed by Duncan J. Watts and Steven Strogatz in their joint 1998 Nature paper...
  
  

External links

• http://research.yahoo.com/Duncan_Watts Home page of Duncan Watts at Yahoo Research