Monday, September 22, 2014

SNA All-Star: M.E.J. Newman

Mark (M.E.J.) Newman is a British physicist and professor at the University of Michigan. He is best known for his work on complex networks and complex systems.

Newman is known in particular for work on scientific co-authorship networks, citation networks, email networks, friendship networks, epidemiological contact networks, and animal social networks. He has also made analytic or computer models of disease propagation, friendship formation, the spread of computer viruses, the Internet, and network navigation algorithms.

He is the author of four books, including “Networks: An Introduction”, released in 2010. In 2014, Newman was awarded the 2014 Lagrange Prize for research achievements in the sciences of complexity. His award citation notes his work in random graphs and community structure in social, technological and biological networks, as well as his contribution to six textbooks and more than 130 scientific articles.

Along with Michael Gastner, Newman created density-equalizing maps, or “cartograms”. Cartograms are maps in which the sizes of geographic regions such as countries or provinces appear in proportion to their population or some other analogous property, and can be used for representation of census results, election returns, disease incidence, and many other kinds of human data. Their work gained attention following the 2004 US presidential election when it was used as the basis for a widely circulated map of the election results.


He has coauthored papers with several scholars, including fellow SNA all-star Duncan Watts.

No comments: