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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anatol Rapoport | 2/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatol_Rapoport | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T17:18:16.540842+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Social network analysis === Rapoport was an early developer of social network analysis. His original work showed that one can measure large networks by profiling traces of flows through them. This enables learning about the speed of the distribution of resources, including information, and what speeds or impedes these flows—such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, proximity, and kinship. This work linked social networks to the diffusion of innovation, and by extension, to epidemiology. Rapoport's empirical work traced the spread of information within a school. It prefigured the study of degrees of separation by showing the rapid spread of information in a population to almost all—but not all—school members (see references below). His work on random nets predates the random graphs as defined by the Erdős–Rényi model and independently by Edgar Gilbert. Rapoport is also the originator of the theory behind the interpretation of bias in social networks, which pertains to the extent to which a network deviates from a random base model. He introduced what is now known as "preferential attachment mechanism" in biased networks. It is a stochastic process that involves connected nodes that snowball into more connections. Rapoport also published an article that outlined a probabilistic approach to animal sociology, which is one of the earliest efforts at modeling simple social structures.
=== Conflict and peace studies === According to Thomas Homer-Dixon in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Rapoport "became anti-militarist quite soon after World War II. The idea of military values became anathema". He was a leading organizer of the first teach-ins against the Vietnam War at the University of Michigan, a model that spread rapidly throughout North America. He told at a teach-in: "By undertaking the war against Vietnam, the United States has undertaken a war against humanity…This war we shall not win". (Ann Arbor News, April 1967). He said he was an abolitionist, rather than a total pacifist: "I'm for killing the institution of war". In 1968, he signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. As a result of his opposition to the Vietnam War, J.Edgar Hoover considered Rapoport a Communist, and organized FBI agents to write letters to the president of the University of Michigan, the Governor of Michigan and others. This smear campaign drove him from Ann Arbor to the University of Toronto. Rapoport returned to the University of Toronto to become the founding (and unpaid) Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies programme, working with George Ignatieff and Canada's Science for Peace organization. As its sole professor at the start, he used a rigorous, interdisciplinary approach to the study of peace, integrating mathematics, politics, psychology, philosophy, science, and sociology. His main concern was to legitimize peace studies as a worthy academic pursuit. The Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies continued to flourish at the University of Toronto under the leadership of Thomas Homer-Dixon, and, from 2008, under Ron Levi. When Rapoport began, there was one (unpaid) professor and twelve students. In 2007, there were three paid professors and ninety students. Rapoport's students report that he was an engaged and inspiring professor who captured their attention, imagination and interest with his wide-ranging knowledge, passion for the subject, good humor, kind and generous spirit, attentiveness to student concerns, and animated teaching style. In 1981 Rapoport co-founded the international non-governmental organization Science for Peace. He was recognized in the 1980s for his contribution to world peace through nuclear conflict restraint via his game theoretic models of psychological conflict resolution. He won the Lentz International Peace Research Prize in 1976. Professor Rapoport was also a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Environmental Peace published by the International Innovation Projects at the University of Toronto.
== Publications ==
=== Books === 1950, Science and the Goals of Man, Harper & Bros., New York 1953, Operational Philosophy: Integrating Knowledge and Action, Harper & Bros., New York 1960, Fights, Games, and Debates, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1965, Prisoner's Dilemma, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. (co-author; Albert M. Chammah) 1966, Two-Person Game Theory: The Essential Ideas, Ann Arbor, MI, The University of Michigan Press. (reprinted by Dover Press, Mineola, NY, 1999). 1969, Strategy and Conscience, Shocken Books, New York, NY. (first published in 1964) 1970, N-Person Game Theory. Concepts and Applications, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. (reprinted by Dover Press, Mineola, NY, 2001). 1974, Conflict in Man-made Environment, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books. 1975, Semantics, Crowell. 1986, General System Theory. Essential Concepts and Applications, Abacus, Tunbridge Wells. 1989, The Origins of Violence: Approaches to the Study of Conflict, Paragon House, New York. 1989, Decision Theory and Decision Behaviour, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1992, Peace: An Idea, Whose Time Has Come, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI. 2000, Certainties and Doubts: A Philosophy of Life, Black Rose Books, Montreal, 2000. His autobiography. 2001, Skating on Thin Ice, RDR Books, Oakland, CA. Рапопорт, А. Б. (2003). Три разговора с русскими. Об истине, любви, борьбе и мире. Прогресс-Традиция. ISBN 5-89826-156-7. (English version: Rapoport, Anatol (2005). Conversations with Three Russians: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Lenin: A Systemic View on Two Centuries of Societal Evolution. Verlag Dr. Kovač. ISBN 978-3830019558.).