History of Network Science

History of Network Science

1736
Leonhard Euler:  Solution of the Seven Bridges of Königsberg (First paper in the history of graph theory)

1929 
Frigyes Karinthy: "Everthing is Different" (one of the fundamental truths about netowrk structure that has driven scientific research in the filed for the last few decades, the last few decades, the concept known today as the "small-world effect", or "six degrees od separation."  From his book, he claims that people were increasingly onnected to each other via their acquaintances, and that the dense web of friendship surrounding each person leads to an interconnected world in which everyone on Earth is at most five acquaintances away from anyone else.  He also aruges that the changing nature of human acquaintance patterns is a consequence of human exploration, of the demolition of geographical boundaries, and of new technologies that allow us to stay in touch even when we are theousands of miles aparts.)

1951 
Anatol Rapoport and Ray Solomonoff: the first time introduced a "random graph." It demonstrates one of the most crucial properties of the model and general statistical properties of networks.  They defined a quantity called the weak connectivity (the average component size in the network), which is the expected number of vertices reachable through the network from a randomly chosen vertex.