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77-405: Six degrees of separation is the theory that anyone on Earth can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries Six degrees or Six degrees of separation may also refer to: Six degrees of separation The concept was originally set out in a 1929 short story by Frigyes Karinthy , in which a group of people play

154-426: A Facebook user, to which it then shows the chain of connections. In June 2009, Bunyan shut down the application, presumably for issues with Facebook's caching policy; specifically, the policy prohibited the storing of friend lists for more than 24 hours; following this policy would have made the application inaccurate. A new version of the application became available at Six Degrees after Karl Bunyan gave permission to

231-704: A 21-acre (8.5 ha) campus in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area in Boston , about 3.3 miles (5.3 km) south of the Cambridge campus. Several Harvard-affiliated hospitals and research institutes are also in Longwood, including Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center , Boston Children's Hospital , Brigham and Women's Hospital , Dana–Farber Cancer Institute , Joslin Diabetes Center , and

308-763: A 358-acre (145 ha) campus in the Allston section of Boston across the John W. Weeks Bridge , which crosses the Charles River and connects the Allston and Cambridge campuses. The university is actively expanding into Allston, where it now owns more land than in Cambridge. Plans include new construction and renovation for the Business School, a hotel and conference center, graduate student housing, Harvard Stadium, and other athletics facilities. In 2021,

385-554: A Free Society , was published by Harvard faculty, which remains one of the most important works in curriculum studies , and women were first admitted to the medical school . Between 1945 and 1960, admissions were standardized to open the university to a more diverse group of students. Following the end of World War II , for example, special exams were developed so veterans could be considered for admission. No longer drawing mostly from prestigious prep schools in New England ,

462-569: A U.S.-sized population without social structure, "it is practically certain that any two individuals can contact one another by means of at most two intermediaries. In a [socially] structured population it is less likely but still seems probable. And perhaps for the whole world's population, probably only one more bridging individual should be needed." They subsequently constructed Monte Carlo simulations based on Gurevich's data, which recognized that both weak and strong acquaintance links are needed to model social structure. The simulations, carried out on

539-574: A game of trying to connect any person in the world to themselves by a chain of five others. It was popularized in John Guare 's 1990 play Six Degrees of Separation . The idea is sometimes generalized to the average social distance being logarithmic in the size of the population. Theories on optimal design of cities, city traffic flows, neighborhoods, and demographics were in vogue after World War I . These conjectures were expanded in 1929 by Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy , who published

616-412: A group of developers led by Todd Chaffee to re-develop the application based on Facebook's revised policy on caching data. The initial version of the application was built at a Facebook Developers Garage London hackathon with Mark Zuckerberg in attendance. Yahoo! Research Small World Experiment has been conducting an experiment and everyone with a Facebook account can take part in it. According to

693-467: A link, and the "six degrees" claim has been decried as an "academic urban myth ". In 2001, Duncan Watts , a professor at Columbia University , attempted to recreate Milgram's experiment on the Internet, using an e-mail message as the "package" that needed to be delivered, with 48,000 senders and 19 targets (in 157 countries). Watts found that the average (though not maximum) number of intermediaries

770-405: A play in 1990 and released a 1993 film that popularized it; it is Guare's most widely known work. The play ruminates upon the idea that any two individuals are connected by at most five others. As one of the characters states: I read somewhere that everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people. Six degrees of separation between us and everyone else on this planet. The President of

847-531: A relatively broad and non-repetitive set of co-author linkages for the target. The author then provided a series of implications and suggestions for future research. Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts , United States. Founded October 28, 1636, and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard , it

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924-587: A union. Bacow retired in June 2023, and on July 1 Claudine Gay , a Harvard professor in the Government and African American Studies departments and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences , became Harvard's 30th president. In January 2024, just six months into her presidency, Gay resigned following allegations of antisemitism and plagiarism . Gay was succeeded by Alan Garber , the university's provost, who

1001-493: A volume of short stories titled Everything Is Different. One of these pieces was titled "Chains" or "Chain-Links". The story investigated—in abstract, conceptual, and fictional terms—many of the problems that captivated future generations of mathematicians, sociologists, and physicists within the field of network theory . Technological advances in communications and travel enabled friendship networks to grow larger and span greater distances. In particular, Karinthy believed that

1078-462: Is Guare's piece that is most responsible for popularizing the phrase "six degrees of separation." Following Guare's lead, many future television and film sources later incorporated the notion into their stories. J. J. Abrams , the executive producer of television series Six Degrees and Lost , played the role of Doug in the film adaptation of this play. The game " Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon "

1155-450: Is a personal acquaintance, he could contact the selected individual using nothing except the network of personal acquaintances. This idea influenced a great deal of early thought on social networks , both directly and indirectly. Karinthy has been regarded as the originator of the notion of six degrees of separation. A related theory deals with the quality of connections, rather than their existence. The theory of three degrees of influence

1232-643: Is called the Erdős number . Erdős-Bacon numbers and Erdős-Bacon-Sabbath (EBS) numbers are further extensions of the same thinking. Watts and Strogatz showed that the average path length (APL) between two nodes in a random network is equal to ln N / ln K , where N = total nodes and K = acquaintances per node. Thus if N = 300,000,000 (90% of the US population, with 10% of population being too young to participate) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = APL = 19.5 / 3.4 = 5.7 and if N = 7,200,000,000 (90% of

1309-502: Is made up of 1st-degree, 2nd-degree, and 3rd-degree connections and fellow members of LinkedIn Groups. In addition, LinkedIn notifies users how many connections they and any other user have in common. SixDegrees.com was an early social-networking website that existed from 1997 to 2000. It allowed users to list friends, family members and acquaintances, send messages and post bulletin board items to people in their first, second, and third degrees, and see their connection to any other user on

1386-627: Is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Its influence, wealth, and rankings have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Harvard was founded and authorized by the Massachusetts General Court , the governing legislature of colonial -era Massachusetts Bay Colony . While never formally affiliated with any denomination , Harvard trained Congregational clergy until its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized in

1463-477: Is the world's largest academic library . Harvard alumni, faculty, and researchers include 188 living billionaires , eight U.S. presidents , 24 heads of state and 31 heads of government , founders of notable companies, Nobel laureates , Fields Medalists , members of Congress , MacArthur Fellows , Rhodes Scholars , Marshall Scholars , Turing Award Recipients , Pulitzer Prize recipients, and Fulbright Scholars ; by most metrics, Harvard University ranks among

1540-525: The American Revolution . In the 19th century, Harvard was influenced by Enlightenment Age ideas, including reason and free will, which were widespread among Congregational ministers and which placed these ministers and their congregations at odds with more traditionalist, Calvinist pastors and clergies. Following the death of Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan in 1803 and that of Joseph Willard , Harvard's eleventh president,

1617-533: The Carnegie Classification . The medical school consistently ranks first among medical schools for research, and biomedical research is an area of particular strength for the university. More than 11,000 faculty and 1,600 graduate students conduct research at the medical school and its 15 affiliated hospitals and research institutes. In 2019, the medical school and its affiliates attracted $ 1.65 billion in competitive research grants from

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1694-494: The Darfur genocide , and tobacco , fossil fuel , and private prison industries. In the late 1980s, during the disinvestment from South Africa movement, student activists erected a symbolic shanty town on Harvard Yard and blockaded a speech by South African Vice Consul Duke Kent-Brown. The university eventually reduced its South African holdings by $ 230 million , out of a total of $ 400 million , in response to

1771-452: The Faculty of Arts and Sciences , including Sever Hall , Harvard Hall , and freshman dormitories . Upperclassmen live in the twelve residential houses , located south of Harvard Yard near the Charles River and on Radcliffe Quadrangle , which formerly housed Radcliffe College students. Each house is a community of undergraduates, faculty deans, and resident tutors, with its own dining hall, library, and recreational facilities. Also on

1848-614: The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences , the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) , and the Division of Continuing Education , which includes Harvard Summer School and Harvard Extension School . There are nine other graduate and professional faculties and a faculty attacked to the Harvard Radcliffe Institute . There are four Harvard joint programs with MIT , which include

1925-648: The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences expanded into the new Allston-based Science and Engineering Complex (SEC), which is more than 500,000 square feet in size. SEC is adjacent to the Enterprise Research Campus, the Business School, and Harvard Innovation Labs, and designed to encourage technology- and life science-focused startups and collaborations with mature companies. The university's schools of Medicine , Dental Medicine , and Public Health are located on

2002-697: The Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology , the Broad Institute , The Observatory of Economic Complexity , and edX . The university maintains 12 schools, which include: Harvard is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and a preeminent research university with "very high" research activity (R1) and comprehensive doctoral programs across the arts, sciences, engineering, and medicine, according to

2079-672: The National Institutes of Health , more than twice that of any other university. Harvard Library , the largest academic library in the world with 20.4 million holdings, is centered in Widener Library in Harvard Yard . It includes 25 individual Harvard libraries around the world with a combined staff of more than 800 librarians and personnel. Houghton Library , the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on

2156-518: The University of Paris in the early 1950s, during a time when Milgram visited and collaborated in their research. Their unpublished manuscript circulated among academics for over 20 years before publication in 1978. It formally articulated the mechanics of social networks, and explored the mathematical consequences of these (including the degree of connectedness). The manuscript left many significant questions about networks unresolved, and one of these

2233-826: The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering . Additional affiliates, including Massachusetts General Hospital , are located throughout Greater Boston . Harvard owns Dumbarton Oaks , a research library in Washington, D.C., Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts , Concord Field Station in Estabrook Woods in Concord, Massachusetts , the Villa I Tatti research center in Florence , Italy, and

2310-529: The 18th century. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among the Boston elite . Following the American Civil War , under Harvard president Charles William Eliot 's long tenure from 1869 to 1909, Harvard developed multiple professional schools, which transformed it into a modern research university . In 1900, Harvard co-founded the Association of American Universities . James B. Conant led

2387-413: The 20th century, as its endowment burgeoned and prominent intellectuals and professors affiliated with it, Harvard University's reputation as one of the world's most prestigious universities grew notably. The university's enrollment also underwent substantial growth, a product of both the founding of new graduate academic programs and an expansion of the undergraduate college . Radcliffe College emerged as

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2464-974: The Center for Hellenic Studies in Greece. https://greece.chs.harvard.edu the Harvard Shanghai Center in Shanghai , China, and Arnold Arboretum in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. Harvard is governed by a combination of its Board of Overseers and the President and Fellows of Harvard College , which is also known as the Harvard Corporation. These two bodies, in turn, appoint the President of Harvard University . There are 16,000 staff and faculty, including 2,400 professors, lecturers, and instructors. Harvard has

2541-732: The History of Women in America, and the Harvard University Archives consist principally of rare and unique materials. The nation's oldest collection of maps, gazetteers, and atlases is stored in Pusey Library on Harvard Yard , which is open to the public. The largest collection of East-Asian language material outside of East Asia is held in Harvard-Yenching Library . Other major libraries in

2618-637: The Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology) was chosen as the target. Co-author publication linkages were determined for (1) top authors within the I-O community, (2) quasi-random faculty members of highly productive I-O programs in North America, and (3) publication trends of the target. Results suggest that the small world phenomenon is alive and well with mean linkages of 3.00 to top authors, mean linkages of 2.50 to quasi-random faculty members, and

2695-475: The United States seemed to be connected by approximately three friendship links, on average, without speculating on global linkages; he never actually used the term "six degrees of separation". Since the Psychology Today article gave the experiments wide publicity, Milgram, Kochen, and Karinthy all had been incorrectly credited as the origin of the notion of six degrees; the most likely popularizer of

2772-530: The United States, a gondolier in Venice, just fill in the names. I find it A) extremely comforting that we're so close, and B) like Chinese water torture that we're so close because you have to find the right six people to make the right connection... I am bound to everyone on this planet by a trail of six people. Guare, in interviews, attributed his awareness of the "six degrees" to Marconi . Although this idea had been circulating in various forms for decades, it

2849-522: The accuracy of the measurements. It was also found that 99.91% of Facebook users were interconnected, forming a large connected component. Facebook reported that the distance had decreased to 4.57 in February 2016, when it had 1.6 billion users (about 22% of the world population). The LinkedIn professional networking site operates the degree of separation one is away from a person with which he or she wishes to communicate. On LinkedIn , one's network

2926-838: The arrival of the 4G mobile network in the United Kingdom, Kevin Bacon appears in several commercials for the EE Network in which he links himself to several well known celebrities and TV shows in the UK. An early version involved former world heavyweight boxing champion John L. Sullivan , in which people asked others to "shake the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand of 'the great John L.'" In 2013, Hungarian physicist Albert-László Barabási discovered that, on average, there are 19 degrees of separation between any 2 web pages. Several "degrees of Misplaced Pages" web services have been created, which automatically provide

3003-534: The characters create a game out of this notion. He wrote: A fascinating game grew out of this discussion. One of us suggested performing the following experiment to prove that the population of the Earth is closer together now than they have ever been before. We should select any person from the 1.5 billion inhabitants of the Earth—anyone, anywhere at all. He bet us that, using no more than five individuals, one of whom

3080-527: The churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." In its early years, the college trained many Puritan ministers and offered a classical curriculum based on the English university model many colonial-era Massachusetts leaders experienced at the University of Cambridge , where many of them studied prior to immigrating to British America . Harvard never formally affiliated with any particular Protestant denomination, but its curriculum conformed to

3157-409: The female counterpart of Harvard College, becoming one of the most prominent schools in the nation for women. In 1923, a year after the percentage of Jewish students at Harvard reached 20%, A. Lawrence Lowell , the university's 22nd president, unsuccessfully proposed capping the admission of Jewish students to 15% of the undergraduate population. Lowell also refused to mandate forced desegregation in

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3234-415: The final target. Amongst the successful chains, while shorter lengths were more common, some reached their target after only 7, 8, 9, or 10 steps. Dodds et al. noted that participants (all volunteers) were strongly biased towards existing models of Internet users and that connectedness based on professional ties was much stronger than those within families or friendships. The authors cite "lack of interest" as

3311-455: The following year, a struggle broke out over their replacements. In 1805, Henry Ware was elected to replace Tappan as Hollis chair. Two years later, in 1807, liberal Samuel Webber was appointed as Harvard's 13th president, representing a shift from traditional ideas at Harvard to more liberal and Arminian ideas. In 1816, Harvard University launched new language programs in the study of French and Spanish , and appointed George Ticknor

3388-507: The following year. In 1638, the university acquired British North America 's first known printing press . The same year, on his deathbed, John Harvard , a Puritan clergyman who emigrated to the colony from England, bequeathed the emerging college £780 and his library of some 320 volumes; the following year, it was named Harvard College . In 1643, a Harvard publication defined the college's purpose: "advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to

3465-562: The largest university endowment in the world, valued at about $ 50.7 billion as of 2023. During the recession of 2007–2009 , it suffered significant losses that forced large budget cuts, in particular temporarily halting construction on the Allston Science Complex. The endowment has since recovered. About $ 2 billion of investment income is annually distributed to fund operations. Harvard's ability to fund its degree and financial aid programs depends on

3542-511: The late 19th century, Harvard University's graduate schools began admitting women in small numbers. In 1900, Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities . For the first few decades of the 20th century, the Harvard student body was predominantly "old-stock, high-status Protestants , especially Episcopalians , Congregationalists , and Presbyterians ," according to sociologist and author Jerome Karabel . Over

3619-553: The main campus in Cambridge are the Law , Divinity (theology), Engineering and Applied Science , Design (architecture), Education , Kennedy (public policy), and Extension schools, and Harvard Radcliffe Institute in Radcliffe Yard. Harvard also has commercial real estate holdings in Cambridge. Harvard Business School , Harvard Innovation Labs , and many athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium , are located on

3696-465: The main campus, a 209-acre (85 ha) in Cambridge centered on Harvard Yard ; an adjoining campus immediately across Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston ; and the medical campus in Boston's Longwood Medical Area . Harvard's endowment , valued at $ 50.7 billion , makes it the wealthiest academic institution in the world. Harvard Library , with more than 20 million volumes,

3773-415: The modern world was "shrinking" from this ever-increasing connectedness of human beings. He posited that despite great physical distances between the globe's individuals, the growing density of human networks made the actual social distance far smaller. As a result of this hypothesis, Karinthy's characters believed that any two individuals could be connected through at most five acquaintances. In his story,

3850-490: The notion of six degrees recently has become influential throughout popular culture . Further advances in communication technology—and particularly the Internet—have drawn great attention to social networks and human interconnectedness. As a result, many popular media sources have addressed the term. The following provide a brief outline of the ways such ideas have shaped popular culture. American playwright John Guare wrote

3927-536: The performance of its endowment; a poor performance in fiscal year 2016 forced a 4.4% cut in the number of graduate students funded by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences . Endowment income is critical, as only 22% of revenue is from students' tuition, fees, room, and board. Since the 1970s, several student-led campaigns have advocated divesting Harvard's endowment from controversial holdings, including investments in South Africa during apartheid , Sudan during

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4004-415: The predominating factor in the high attrition rate, a finding consistent with earlier studies. Several studies, such as Milgram's small-world experiment , have been conducted to measure this connectedness empirically. The phrase "six degrees of separation" is often used as a synonym for the idea of the "small world" phenomenon. However, detractors argue that Milgram's experiment did not demonstrate such

4081-432: The pressure. Harvard is a large, highly residential research university offering 50 undergraduate majors, 134 graduate degrees, and 32 professional degrees. During the 2018–2019 academic year, Harvard granted 1,665 baccalaureate degrees, 1,013 graduate degrees, and 5,695 professional degrees. Harvard College , the four-year, full-time undergraduate program, has a liberal arts and sciences focus. To graduate in

4158-436: The relatively limited computers of 1973, were nonetheless able to predict that a more realistic three degrees of separation existed across the U.S. population, foreshadowing the findings of American psychologist Stanley Milgram . Milgram continued Gurevich's experiments in acquaintanceship networks at Harvard University . Kochen and de Sola Pool's manuscript, Contacts and Influences , was conceived while both were working at

4235-475: The research page, this research has the potential of resolving the still unresolved theory of six degrees of separation. Facebook's data team released two papers in November 2011 which document that amongst all Facebook users at the time of research (721 million users with 69 billion friendship links) there is an average distance of 4.74. Probabilistic algorithms were applied on statistical metadata to verify

4312-513: The service at that time were only four steps away from each other, while nearly everyone was five steps or less away. In a 2011 work, researchers showed that the average distance of 1,500 random users on the site was 3.435, at that time. They calculated the distance between each pair of users using all active users. Mathematicians use an analogous notion of collaboration distance : two persons are linked if they are coauthors of an article. The collaboration distance with mathematician Paul Erdős

4389-452: The shortest paths between two Misplaced Pages articles. A Facebook platform application named "Six Degrees" was developed by Karl Bunyan, which calculates the degrees of separation between people. It had over 5.8 million users, as seen from the group's page. The average separation for all users of the application is 5.73 degrees, whereas the maximum degree of separation is 12. The application has a "Search for Connections" window to input any name of

4466-415: The site. At its height, it had 3,500,000 fully registered members. However, it was closed in 2000. Users on the X social network (formerly known as Twitter) can follow other users, creating a network of connections. According to a 2010 study of 5.2 billion such relationships by social media monitoring firm Sysomos , the average distance on the service that year was 4.67. On average, about 50% of people on

4543-844: The six degrees of separation principle via information routing groups, which are networks specifically designed to exploit this principle and lateral diffusion. Bakhshandeh et al. have addressed the search problem of identifying the degree of separation between two users in social networks. They introduced new search techniques to provide optimal or near optimal solutions. The experiments were performed on Twitter (now X) in 2011, and showed an improvement of several orders of magnitude over greedy approaches. Their optimal algorithm found an average degree of separation of 3.43 between 2 random Twitter users, requiring an average of only 67 requests for information. A near-optimal solution of length 3.88 could be found by making an average of 13.3 requests. No longer limited strictly to academic or philosophical thinking,

4620-423: The surrounding Harvard Square neighborhood. The Yard houses several Harvard buildings, including four of the university's libraries, Houghton , Lamont , Pusey , and Widener . Also on Harvard Yard are Massachusetts Hall , built between 1718 and 1720 and the university's oldest still standing building, Memorial Church , and University Hall Harvard Yard and adjacent areas include the main academic buildings of

4697-460: The tenets of Puritanism. In 1650, the charter for Harvard Corporation , the college's governing body, was granted. From 1681 to 1701, Increase Mather , a Puritan clergyman, served as Harvard's sixth president . In 1708, John Leverett became Harvard's seventh president and the first president who was not also a clergyman. Harvard faculty and students largely supported the Patriot cause during

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4774-509: The term "six degrees of separation" was John Guare , who attributed the concept of six degrees to Marconi . In 2003, Columbia University conducted an analogous experiment on social connectedness amongst Internet email users. Their effort was named the Columbia Small World Project, and included 24,163 e-mail chains, aimed at 18 targets from 13 countries. Almost 100,000 people registered, but only 384 (0.4%) reached

4851-498: The top universities in the world in each of these categories. Harvard students and alumni have also collectively won 10 Academy Awards and 110 Olympic medals , including 46 gold. Harvard was founded in 1636 during the colonial , pre- Revolutionary era by vote of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony , one of the original Thirteen Colonies of British America . Its first headmaster, Nathaniel Eaton , took office

4928-498: The undergraduate college became accessible to striving middle class students from public schools; many more Jews and Catholics were admitted, but still few Blacks, Hispanics, or Asians versus the representation of these groups in the general U.S. population. Over the second half of the 20th century, however, the university became incrementally more diverse. Between 1971 and 1999, Harvard controlled undergraduate admission, instruction, and housing for Radcliffe's women; in 1999, Radcliffe

5005-496: The university through the Great Depression and World War II , and liberalized admissions after the war. The university has ten academic faculties and a faculty attached to Harvard Radcliffe Institute . The Faculty of Arts and Sciences offers study in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate academic disciplines , and other faculties offer graduate degrees, including professional degrees. Harvard has three campuses:

5082-400: The university's freshman dormitories , writing that, "We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man, but we do not owe to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial." Between 1933 and 1953, Harvard University was led by James B. Conant , the university's 23rd president, who reinvigorated

5159-428: The university's creative scholarship in an effort to guarantee Harvard's preeminence among the nation and world's emerging research institutions. Conant viewed higher education as a vehicle of opportunity for the talented rather than an entitlement for the wealthy, and devised programs to identify, recruit, and support talented youth. In 1945, under Conant's leadership, an influential 268-page report, General Education in

5236-531: The university's first professor for these language programs. From 1869 to 1909, Charles William Eliot , Harvard University's 21st president, decreased the historically favored position of Christianity in the curriculum, opening it to student self-direction. Though Eliot was an influential figure in the secularization of U.S. higher education, he was motivated primarily by Transcendentalist and Unitarian convictions influenced by William Ellery Channing , Ralph Waldo Emerson , and others, rather than secularism. In

5313-507: The usual four years, undergraduates normally take four courses per semester. In most majors, an honors degree requires advanced coursework and a senior thesis. Though some introductory courses have large enrollments, the median class size is 12 students. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences , with an academic staff of 1,211 as of 2019, is the largest Harvard faculty, and has primary responsibility for instruction in Harvard College ,

5390-622: The world population, with 10% of population being too young to participate) and K = 30 then Degrees of Separation = APL = 22.7 / 3.4 = 6.7. A 2007 article published in The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist , by Jesse S. Michel from Michigan State University, applied Stanley Milgram's small world phenomenon (i.e., "small world problem") to the field of I-O psychology through co-author publication linkages. Following six criteria, Scott Highhouse (Bowling Green State University professor and fellow of

5467-464: Was appointed interim president. In August 2024, the university announced that Garber would be appointed Harvard's 31st president through the end of the 2026–27 academic year. The 209-acre (85 ha) main campus of Harvard University is centered on Harvard Yard , colloquially known as "the Yard," in Cambridge, Massachusetts , about 3 miles (5 km) west-northwest of downtown Boston , and extending to

5544-434: Was around six. A 2007 study by Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz examined a data set of instant messages composed of 30 billion conversations among 240 million people. They found the average path length among Microsoft Messenger users to be 6. It has been suggested by some commentators that interlocking networks of computer-mediated lateral communication could diffuse single messages to all interested users worldwide as per

5621-580: Was aware of the Statist rule of thumb , and was also a colleague of de Sola Pool, Kochen and Milgram at the University of Paris during the early 1950s. (Kochen brought Mandelbrot to work at the Institute for Advanced Study and later IBM in the U.S.) This circle of researchers was fascinated by the interconnectedness and "social capital" of human networks. Milgram's study results showed that people in

5698-457: Was created by Nicholas Christakis and James H. Fowler . Michael Gurevich conducted seminal work in his empirical study of the structure of social networks in his 1961 Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD dissertation under Ithiel de Sola Pool . Mathematician Manfred Kochen , an Austrian who had been involved in urban design, extrapolated these empirical results in a mathematical manuscript, Contacts and Influences , concluding that in

5775-458: Was formally merged into Harvard University. On July 1, 2007, Drew Gilpin Faust , dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute , was appointed Harvard's 28th and the university's first female president. On July 1, 2018, Faust retired and joined the board of Goldman Sachs , and Lawrence Bacow became Harvard's 29th president . In February 2023, approximately 6,000 Harvard workers attempted to organize

5852-535: Was invented as a play on the concept: the goal is to link any actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than six connections, whereby two actors are connected if they have appeared in a movie or commercial together. It was created by three students at Albright College in Pennsylvania, who came up with the concept while watching Footloose . On September 13, 2012, Google made it possible to search for any given actor's "Bacon Number" through its search engine. Upon

5929-777: Was the number of degrees of separation in actual social networks. Milgram took up the challenge on his return from Paris , leading to the experiments reported in The Small World Problem in popular science journal Psychology Today , with a more rigorous version of the paper appearing in Sociometry two years later. Milgram's article made famous his 1967 set of experiments to investigate de Sola Pool and Kochen's "small world problem." Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot , born in Warsaw, growing up in Poland then France,

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