Review of Network Science by Albert-Làaszlò Barabàasi

Albert-Làaszlò Barabàasi can be credited with bringing network science to the general public. After a series of papers in such heavyweights as Nature and Science, his book Linked gave a popular science account of the field. With Network Science he turns his attention to newcomer students who want to start from scratch and go through a wide ranging, yet accessible, introduction. The explosion of publications and interest in network science makes it easy to forget how new it is. True, the germs of network science were sown many decades back (one can think of the work of Yule and Zipf as early precursors), but it was not until the end of the millennium that scientists from different disciplines, ranging from computer science and mathematics to physics and statistics, started paying attention to what appear to be a set of unifying principles and underlying phenomena. Barabàasi did not invent the field, but his publications created a lot of buzz in many places; and in a short while, scientists all over were studying power laws, critical phenomena, and networks-not computer networks, just networks. (This reviewer remembers the period, when describing a course on network science he had to always add a proviso like "this is not about computer networks"; otherwise students would get the idea that this was about hardcore computer science. The situation has changed somewhat since then.)