Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

Twenty years of network science

The idea that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by just six degrees of separation was explained by the ‘small-world’ network model 20 years ago. What seemed to be a niche finding turned out to have huge consequences.
  1. Alessandro Vespignani

    1. Alessandro Vespignani is in the Network Science Institute and the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Sociotechnical Systems, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

In 1998, Watts and Strogatz1 introduced the ‘small-world’ model of networks, which describes the clustering and short separations of nodes found in many real-life networks. I still vividly remember the discussion I had with fellow statistical physicists at the time: the model was seen as sort of interesting, but seemed to be merely an exotic departure from the regular, lattice-like network structures we were used to. But the more the paper was assimilated by scientists from different fields, the more it became clear that it had deep implications for our understanding of dynamic behaviour and phase transitions in real-world phenomena ranging from contagion processes to information diffusion. It soon became apparent that the paper had ushered in a new era of research that would lead to the establishment of network science as a multidisciplinary field.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 558, 528-529 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05444-y

References

  1. Watts, D. J. & Strogatz, S. H. Nature 393, 440–442 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Erdös, P. & Rényi, A. Publ. Math. 6, 290–297 (1959).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Milgram, S. Psychol. Today 1, 61–67 (1967).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Guare, J. Six Degrees of Separation (Vintage, 1990).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Barthélémy, M. & Amaral, L. A. N. Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 3180–3183 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Barabási, A.-L. & Albert, R. Science 286, 509–512 (1999).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Pastor-Satorras, R., Castellano, C., Van Mieghem, P. & Vespignani, A. Rev. Mod. Phys. 87, 925-979 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Arenas, A., Díaz-Guilera, A., Kurths, J., Moreno, Y. & Zhou, C. Phys. Rep. 469, 93–153 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Albert, R., Jeong, H. & Barabási, A.-L. Nature 401, 130-131 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Sporns, O., Chialvo, D. R., Kaiser, M. & Hilgetag, C. C. Trends Cogn. Sci. 8, 418–425(2004).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  11. Newman, M. E. J. SIAM Rev. 45, 167–256 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Porter, M. A., Onnela, J. P. & Mucha, P. J. Not. Am. Math. Soc. 56, 1082–1097 (2009); go.nature.com/2jg9dgq

    Google Scholar 

  13. Fortunato, S. Phys. Rep. 486, 75–174 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links