Networks: A Very Short Introduction

ISBN-13: 9780199588077 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 136 str.

Guido Caldarelli

Opis

Networks are involved in many aspects of everyday life, from food webs in ecology and the spread of pandemics to social networking and public transportation. In fact, some of the most important and familiar natural systems and social phenomena are based on a networked structure. It is impossible to understand the spread of an epidemic, a computer virus, large-scale blackouts, or massive extinctions without taking into account the network structure that underlies all these phenomena. In this Very Short Introduction, Guido Caldarelli and Michele Catanzaro discuss the nature and variety of networks, using everyday examples from society, technology, nature, and history to illuminate the science of network theory. The authors describe the ubiquitous role of networks, reveal how networks self-organize, explain why the rich get richer, and discuss how networks can spontaneously collapse. They conclude by highlighting how the findings of complex network theory have very wide and important applications in genetics, ecology, communications, economics, and sociology.

O autorze

Guido Caldarelli is Full Professor in Theoretical Physics in the IMT Alti Studi Lucca and a member of Complex System Institute of the National Research Council, Italy. He is the author of about 100 scientific papers and an expert of scale-free networks and self-similar phenomena, especially of the applications of network theory to evaluation of systemic risk in financial and economic systems. He has worked at the University 'Sapienza' in Rome, the University of Manchester, and the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the textbook Scale-Free Networks (OUP, 2007). Michele Catanzaro is a freelance journalist based in Barcelona, Spain. He collaborates with media in the UK (Nature, PhysicsWorld), Spain (El Periódico), and Italy (Le Scienze). He holds a PhD on Dynamics in Complex Networks by the Technical University of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain). He has published several scientific papers in international journals and his work as a journalist has been recognized by three prizes in Spain.