Harrison White
| Harrison White | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Washington, DC, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Sociological Theory, Social Network Analysis, Mathematical Sociology |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton |
| Doctoral advisor | John C. Slater (Physics), Marion J. Levy Jr. (sociology) |
| Doctoral students | Edward Laumann, Michael Schwartz, Mark Granovetter, Peter Bearman, Ronald Breiger, Nancy Howell Lee, Barry Wellman, |
| Influenced | W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award |
Harrison Colyar White (born March 21, 1930) is the emeritus Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. White played an influential role in the “Harvard Revolution” in social networks and the New York School of relational sociology. He is credited with the development of a number of mathematical models of social structure including vacancy chains and blockmodels. He has been a leader of a revolution in sociology that is still in process, using models of social structure that are based on patterns of relations instead of the attributes and attitudes of individuals.
Among social network researchers, White is widely respected. For instance, at the 1997 International Network of Social Network Analysis conference, the organizer held a special “White Tie” event, dedicated to White). Social network researcher Emmanuel Lazega refers to him as both “Copernicus and Galileo” because he invented both the vision and the tools.
The most comprehensive documentation of his theories can be found in the book Identity and Control, first published in 1992. A major rewrite of the book appeared in June 2008. In 2011, White received the W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association, which honors "scholars who have shown outstanding commitment to the profession of sociology and whose cumulative work has contributed in important ways to the advancement of the discipline." Before his retirement to live in Tucson, Arizona, White was interested in sociolinguistics and business strategy as well as sociology.
White was born on March 21, 1930 in Washington, D.C.. He had seven siblings and his father was a doctor in the US Navy. Although moving around to different Naval Bases throughout his adolescence, he considered himself Southern, and Nashville, TN to be his home. At the age of 15, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), receiving his undergraduate degree at 20 years of age; five years later, in 1955, he received a doctorate in theoretical physics, also from MIT with John C. Slater as his advisor. His dissertation was titled A quantum-mechanical calculation of inter-atomic force constants in copper. This was published in the Physical Review as "Atomic Force Constants of Copper from Feynman's Theorem" (1958). While at MIT he also took a course with the political scientist Karl Deutsch, who White credits with encouraging him to move toward the social sciences.
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