Mark Granovetter

Mark Granovetter is an American sociologist and professor at Stanford University, best known for his work in social network theory and economic sociology. His 1973 paper The Strength of Weak Ties argued that the loosely connected acquaintances in a person's social network, rather than close friends, often carry the most valuable new information, since weak ties bridge otherwise separate social clusters. In 2014 Thomson Reuters named him a Citation Laureate and added him to its list of predicted Nobel Prize winners in economics, and data from the Web of Science credit him with writing both the first and third most cited sociology articles.