Understaning of how networks work, how things are connected and how future connections might be predicted have all evolved in recent years thanks to the work of Albert-László Barabási, a Romanian-born physicist at the University of Notre Dame. Popular Science has a great feature on him, showing how the network scientist influenced fields from engineering to biology.
While his influence on mapping networks and helping develop methods of predicting behavior are well known, it is work as a self-proclaimed “control theorist” that might prove most influential. By finding the equivalent of a car’s steering wheel, brake and gas pedal in any network, people may soon exert control over networks such as the human hormone system to Facebook.