Education
He moved to the University of Chicago to work with mathematical sociology professor James Samuel Coleman and earned his Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in 1977.
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Ronald Burt
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He is most notable for his research and writing on social networks and social capital, particularly the concept of structural holes in a social network. Originally a pre-medical major, Burt earned his Bachelor of Arts in social and behavioral sciences from Johns Hopkins University in 1971 with a focus on social psychology. He earned a Master of Arts in Sociology from The State University of New York at Albany in 1973 working with Nan Lin.
His dissertation committee also included the social network analyst Edward Laumann.
Prior to joining the University of Chicago in 1993, he was a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University. He is also the former Shell Professor of Human Resources at European Institute of Business Administration (Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires) and has held various organizational development positions at Raytheon.
He currently resides in the Chicago metropolitan area. He is the author of several books on sociology, organization behavior and network analysis, including Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Harvard University Press, 1992) and Brokerage and Closure: An Introduction to Social Capital (Oxford University Press, 2005) His research has been published in numerous academic journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Organization Behavior, Organization Science, Social Networks, Sociological Inquiry, and others
