Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Albert-László Barabási
Northeastern University

Citation:

"For pioneering work on the statistical physics of networks that transformed the study of complex systems, and for lasting contributions in communicating the significance of this rapidly developing field to a broad range of audiences."

Background:

Albert-László Barabási received a Master’s in Theoretical Physics at the Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary in 1991 and Ph.D. at Boston University in 1994. His work has altered our understanding of real networks, with impact from statistical physics to biology. His most celebrated contribution is the Barabási-Albert model, which explained why many real systems develop a similar scale-free architecture. He demonstrated that network structure directly impacts the system’s behavior, finding that while a scale-free network is robust to random node failures, it is fragile to directed attacks. Barabási played a pioneering role in bringing a network perspective to cell biology, leading to the field of network medicine, His papers have helped launch a new interdisciplinary field, named network science by a 2005 NRC Report. Barabási is the author of “Network Science” (Cambridge, 2016), the co-author of “Science of Science” (Cambridge, 2021), and “Fractal Concepts in Surface Growth (Cambridge, 1995), He co-edited “Network Medicine” (Harvard, 2017) and "The Structure and Dynamics of Networks" (Princeton, 2005). He authored the general audience books “The Formula” (Little Brown, 2018) "Linked" (Penguin, 2002), and "Bursts:" (Dutton, 2010), translated into over twenty languages. Barabási is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and received the FEBS Anniversary Prize for Systems Biology, the John von Neumann Medal in computer science, the Cozzarelli Prize by the US National Academies of Sciences, the Lagrange Prize. He is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Romanian Academy, Academia Europaea, and The European Academy.


Selection Committee:

2023 Selection Committee Members: Robert Rosner (Chair), Amitava Bhattacharjee, Brian Fields, Daniel Fisher, David Schultz, Heinrich Jaeger, Howrd Stone, James Adams, James Freericks, John Fourkas, John Wilkerson, Karen Winey, Kenneth Brown, Manuela Campanelli, Peter Schiffer, Robert Bernstein, Stuart Henderson, Tanja Cuk, William Halperin