Duncan Watts is an Australian researcher on social networks and
collective dynamics at Microsoft Research. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was a
member of the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, a sociology professor
at Columbia University, and a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research,
where he directed the Human Social Dynamics Group. Watts holds a B.Sc. in physics from
the University of New South Wales and a PhD in theoretical and applied
mechanics from Cornell University.
In 1998, Watts and Steven Strogatz published a widely read and cited paper entitled “Collective Dynamics of Small-World Networks,” in which they presented the first network model of the small world phenomenon. The paper was regarded as a significant breakthrough in the field of complex networks. Then, in 2001, Watts recreated Stanley Milgram’s small world experiment using email—finding that the average number of intermediaries through which the “package” had to go was six.
A prolific publisher in scientific journals, Watts is also the author of
three books: Six Degrees: The
Science of a Connected Age, Small
Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness, and most
recently Everything is
Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us, which argues that peoples’ use of
common sense reasoning and history frequently leads to misconceptions about
human behavior.
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