Buchanan, Mark

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Virginia, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—Garamond Agency, 12 Horton St., Newburyport, MA 01950.

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and theoretical physicist. Freelance writer, 1998—. Previously worked on the editorial staff of Nature and as a features editor for New Scientist, c. 1995-98.

WRITINGS:

Ubiquity: The Science of History, or Why the World Is Simpler Than We Think, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 2000, published as Ubiquity, Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 2001.

Small World: Uncovering Nature's Hidden Networks, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (New York, NY), 2002.

Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You, Bloomsbury USA (New York, NY), 2007.

Also author of the blog The Social Atom. Contributor to periodicals, including Nature, New Scientist, New Statesman, Independent, Times Higher Education Supplement, Harvard Business Review, and strategy+business, and guest columnist for New York Times. Nexus has been published in eleven languages.

SIDELIGHTS:

Freelance science writer Mark Buchanan was trained as a theoretical physicist and has conducted research in chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics. The author of several books, Buchanan writes about the interconnectedness of all things in Ubiquity: The Science of History, or Why the World Is Simpler Than We Think. Published as Ubiquity in America, the book takes a look at systems in perpetual imbalance through the study of nonequilibrium physics. The author's theory is that this type of physics study can be used to look at cataclysms throughout history and how they are interconnected, from natural disasters such as earthquakes and forest fires to economics and war. For example, he describes how a small and seemingly unimportant accident—a driver taking a wrong turn—delivered Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand to his assassin, and thereby set into motion a cascade of sociopolitical events that ultimately led to World War I. "Cautionary but entertaining, Buchanan extends his thesis to fluctuations of the stock market, the migrations of peoples, and even the advance of science itself," wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Michael D. Cramer, writing in the Library Journal noted that the author "ably illustrates the law of universality."

One of the author's primary interests is the "small world" theory, or experiments that look at the average path length, or average number of steps along the shortest paths, connecting people within social networks. He explores this idea in Small World: Uncovering Nature's Hidden Networks and in his subsequent book, Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks. In Nexus, Buchanan takes the famous sociological experiment that denoted "six degrees of separation" between people and expands it to demonstrate similar connections within other networks, such as the World Wide Web and even the brain. Ultimately, the author explores the mathematical aspects of coincidence and the idea that there are basic principles that provide an order to seemingly disparate things. Colleen Cuddy, writing in the Library Journal, called Nexus "a good primer to basic network concepts." A Kirkus Reviews contributor referred to the book as "an intriguing, accessible look at the mathematics behind the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory."

The author continues his exploration of interconnectedness in The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You. This time, the author explores the scientific models that try to explain the patterns that result when large groups of people interact. Looking at humans as "social atoms," the author contends, can enable computer modeling to help us understand the patterns in people's interactions and, thus, enable us to understand and predict human behavior. A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that "the real-life scenarios he uses to illustrate his theories … are engaging."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Scientist, Prabhakar Raghavan, January-February, 2003, "Not a Small World after All," review of Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, p. 80.

Booklist, September 1, 2001, Gilbert Taylor, review of Ubiquity: The Science of History, or Why the World Is Simpler Than We Think, p. 26; May 1, 2002, Gilbert Taylor, review of Nexus, p. 1493.

Internet World, November, 2002, review of Nexus, p. 10.

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, review of Ubiquity, p. 1181; March 15, 2002, review of Nexus, p. 377.

Library Journal, October 15, 2001, Michael D. Cramer, review of Ubiquity, p. 104; May 1, 2002, Colleen Cuddy, review of Nexus, p. 129.

Nature, November 2, 2000, Niall Ferguson, "A Powerful Leap from Chaos," review of Ubiquity, pp. 21-22.

New Statesman, October 30, 2000, Edward Skidelsky, "The Ethics of the Sandpile," review of Ubiquity; September 2, 2002, Mark Buchanan, "The Science of Inequality: You Always Knew That the Rich Got Richer through No Merit of Their Own, Didn't You? Now, with the Aid of Computers, Scientists Think They Have Proved It," p. 19.

Physics World, November, 2000, Carlton Caves, "History Found in a Grain of Sand," review of Ubiquity.

Publishers Weekly, September 10, 2001, review of Ubiquity, p. 76; April 29, 2002, review of Nexus, p. 52; March 19, 2007, review of The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You, p. 52.

Science News, August 10, 2002, review of Nexus, p. 95.

ONLINE

Garamond Agency,http://www.garamondagency.com/ (June 11, 2007), brief profile of author.

Mark Buchanan Home Page,http://perso.orange.fr/mark.buchanan (August 21, 2007).

MercuryNews.com,http://events.mercurynews.com/ (June 11, 2007), "Event: Mark Buchanan Discusses His New Book The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You."