Nicholas A. Christakis ( ) (born May 7, 1962) is a Greek American
sociologist and physician known for his research on social networks and on the social, economic, biological, and evolutionary determinants of human welfare (including the behavior, health, and capabilities of individuals and groups). He is the
Sterling Professor
Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a Academic tenure in North America, tenured faculty member considered the best in their field. It is akin to the rank of distinguished professor at other universities. ...
of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. He is also the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science.
Christakis was elected a Fellow of the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the ...
in 2024. He was elected a Fellow of the
National Academy of Medicine
The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), known as the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineerin ...
in 2006; of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...
in 2010; and of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
in 2017. In 2021, he received an
honorary degree
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...
in economics from the
University of Athens
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; , ''Ethnikó kai Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the University of Athens (UoA), is a public university in Athens, Greece, with various campuses alo ...
, Greece. He was awarded the Barry Prize for Distinguished Intellectual Achievement by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters in 2024.
In 2009, Christakis was named to the
Time 100
''Time'' 100 is a list of the top 100 most influential people, assembled by the American news magazine ''Time''. First published in 1999 as the result of a debate among American academics, politicians, and journalists, the list is now a highly ...
,
''Time'' magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. In 2009 and again in 2010, he was named by ''
Foreign Policy
Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...
'' magazine to its list of top global thinkers.
Early life and education
Christakis' parents are Greek. They had three biological children and then adopted two others, an African-American girl and a Taiwanese boy.
His father was a nuclear physicist turned business consultant and his mother a physical chemist turned psychologist.
Christakis was born in
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is List ...
in 1962 when both his parents were
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
graduate students. His family returned to Greece when he was three, and
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
became his first language. He returned to the United States with his family at age six and grew up in Washington, D.C. He graduated from
St. Albans School.
Christakis obtained a
B.S. in biology from
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
in 1984,
where he won the
Russell Henry Chittenden Prize. He received an
M.D.
A Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated MD, from the Latin ) is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the ''MD'' denotes a professional degree of physician. This ge ...
from
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...
and an
M.P.H. from the
Harvard School of Public Health
The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school at Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. It was named after Hong Kong entrepreneur Chan Tseng-hsi in 2014 following a US$350 ...
in 1989, winning the
Bowdoin Prize.
In 1991, Christakis completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the
University of Pennsylvania Health System. He was certified by the
American Board of Internal Medicine
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, self-appointed physician-evaluation organization that certifies physicians practicing internal medicine and its subspecialties. The American Board of Internal Medicine is no ...
in 1993.
He obtained a
Ph.D. in sociology from the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
in 1995. While at the University of Pennsylvania as a
Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, he studied with
Renee C. Fox, a distinguished American medical sociologist;
other members of his dissertation committee were methodologist
Paul Allison and physician Sankey Williams. His dissertation was published as ''Death Foretold'', his first book.
[Gina Kolata]
"A Conversation with: Nicholas Christakis; A Doctor with a Cause: 'What's My Prognosis?
''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', November 28, 2000.
Career
In 1995, Christakis started as an assistant professor with joint appointments in the Departments of Sociology and of Medicine at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
. In 2001, he was awarded tenure in both Sociology and Medicine. He left the University of Chicago to take up a position at Harvard in 2001. Until July 2013,
he was a professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology in the
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is the largest of the ten faculties that constitute Harvard University.
Headquartered principally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and centered in the historic Harvard Yard, FAS is the only faculty respo ...
; a professor of medical sociology in the Department of Health Care Policy and a professor of medicine in the Department of Medicine at
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...
; and an attending physician at the Harvard-affiliated Mount Auburn Hospital.
In 2013, Christakis moved to Yale University,
where he is a professor of social and natural science in the Department of Sociology, with additional appointments in the Departments of Statistics and Data Science; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Biomedical Engineering; Medicine; and in the School of Management.
He served as the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science from 2013
to 2018, when he was appointed as a
Sterling Professor
Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a Academic tenure in North America, tenured faculty member considered the best in their field. It is akin to the rank of distinguished professor at other universities. ...
, the highest honor bestowed on Yale faculty.
From 2009 to 2013, Christakis and his wife,
Erika Christakis, were Co-Masters of
Pforzheimer House, one of
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
's twelve
residential houses. From 2015 to 2016, he served in a similar capacity at
Silliman College at Yale University.
Research
Christakis uses quantitative methods (e.g., experiments, mathematical models, and statistical analyses). His work focuses on
network science
Network science is an academic field which studies complex networks such as telecommunication networks, computer networks, biological networks, Cognitive network, cognitive and semantic networks, and social networks, considering distinct eleme ...
and
biosocial science, and it has also involved
sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
,
economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...
,
demography
Demography () is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration.
Demographic analysis examine ...
,
evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biolo ...
,
evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regard to the ancestral problems they evolved ...
,
behavior genetics
Behavioural genetics, also referred to as behaviour genetics, is a field of scientific research that uses genetic methods to investigate the nature and origins of individual differences in behaviour. While the name "behavioural genetics" c ...
, and
epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and Risk factor (epidemiology), determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population, and application of this knowledge to prevent dise ...
. He is an author or editor of six books, more than 200 peer-reviewed academic articles, numerous editorials in national and international publications, and at least three patents. His laboratory is also active in the development and release of software to conduct large-scale social science experiments, pioneering its use beginning in 2009 (e.g., Breadboard, Trellis).
Christakis' early work was on physician decision-making and end-of-life care. He first began to study interpersonal social network effects in this setting in the late 1990s, with a series of studies of the
widowhood effect
The widowhood effect is the increase in the probability of a person dying a relatively short time after a long-time spouse has died. It can also be referred to as "dying of a broken heart." Being widowed increases the likelihood of developing sev ...
, whereby the death of one person might increase the risk of death of their spouse.
He developed a number of innovative ways to estimate the causal nature of these effects (e.g., by studying how the death of a man's ex-wife might affect his risk of death), and he expanded the scope of such work to analyze, for instance, how the precise diagnosis or duration of illness of the decedent might modify the risk of death of their survivor or how better quality of health care given to a dying person might reduce the risk of death of their survivor. In a 2006 paper in ''
The New England Journal of Medicine
''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. Founded in 1812, the journal is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals. Its 2023 impact factor w ...
'' that analyzed 518,240 elderly couples, he explored how hospitalization of a spouse, and not just their death, might affect a survivor's mortality risk.
Building on his early studies of network effects involving simple dyads of people (spousal pairs), Christakis began to examine the impact of illness and death through social networks of family, friends, and colleagues.
Starting in 2004, he began to study "hyper-dyadic" network effects, whereby processes of social contagion moved beyond pairs of people. Using observational studies with his colleague
James H. Fowler, he documented that a variety of phenomena like obesity,
smoking,
and happiness, rather than being solely individualistic, also arise via social contagion mechanisms over some distance within complex social networks (see: "
three degrees of influence"). Later observational work explored how vaccination might spread across social networks. In a 2010
TED talk, Christakis summarized the broader implications of the role of networks in human activity.
In 2010, by exploiting the
friendship paradox
The friendship paradox is the phenomenon first observed by the sociologist Scott L. Feld in 1991 that on average, an individual's friends have more friends than that individual. It can be explained as a form of sampling bias in which people with ...
, a paper analyzed the spread of
H1N1
Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 (A/H1N1) is a subtype of influenza A virus (IAV). Some human-adapted strains of H1N1 are endemic in humans and are one cause of seasonal influenza (flu). Other strains of H1N1 are endemic in pigs ( swine influen ...
influenza at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
(as part of the
2009 swine flu pandemic
The 2009 swine flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1/swine flu/influenza virus and declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) from June 2009 to August 2010, was the third recent flu pandemic involving the H1N1 virus (the first being the 1918� ...
) and showed that an understanding of social networks could be used to develop 'sensors' for forecasting epidemics (of germs and other phenomena). In another 2010 TED talk, Christakis describes this effort (and computational social science more generally). A follow-up paper in 2014 documented the utility of this "friendship paradox" "sensor networks" approach to forecast online trends using
Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
data.
Beginning in 2010, further work by Christakis and his collaborators used experimental methods and diverse data sets and settings to study social network contagion and structure, thereby enhancing the robustness of causal inference.
For instance, a 2010 paper demonstrated that cooperative behavior could spread to three degrees of separation.
A 2015 paper showed that vitamin use in developing-world villages could be made to be contagious.
A 2022 paper used another experiment to show how a novel "pair targeting" algorithm could enhance population-level social contagion of the adoption of iron-fortified salt to reduce anemia in mothers and children in India. A randomized controlled field trial involving 24,702 people in 176 villages in Honduras published in 2024 documented social contagion in diverse health behaviors to two degrees of separation.
Christakis and colleagues also published a series of papers exploring how experimental manipulation of social network structure itself might enhance human welfare. Early work, starting in 2011, focused on how experimental manipulation of network structure could enhance human cooperation and economic productivity.
Other work explored how network topology could affect human communication during a time of crisis or could optimize resource sharing. A 2019 paper in ''
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scie ...
'' (''PNAS'') showed that experimentally re-wiring social networks could enhance human welfare without either redistributing or increasing resources. Additionally, an observational study of a novel monetary system (Sardex, a
complementary currency
A complementary currency is a currency or medium of exchange that is not necessarily a national currency, but that is thought of as supplementing or complementing national currencies. Complementary currencies are usually not legal tender and the ...
introduced during the 2010 financial crisis) showed that k-cycle centrality was associated with economic success at the level of individual firms or the system as a whole.
In 2009, Christakis' group began to study the evolutionary biology, genetics, and physiology of social networks, publishing in ''PNAS'' a finding that social network position may be partially heritable, and specifically that an increase in twins' shared genetic material corresponds to differences in their social networks. In 2011, a follow-up paper on "Correlated Genotypes in Friendship Networks" in ''PNAS'' advanced the argument that humans may be
metagenomic with respect to the people around them. Further work on this topic included "Friendship and Natural Selection" in ''PNAS'' in 2014, showing that people have a small but discernible preference for choosing as their friends other people who resemble them roughly as much as third or fourth cousins. In 2012, in a paper in ''
Nature
Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...
'', Christakis' group analyzed the social networks of the
Hadza hunter-gatherers, showing that human social network structure appears to have ancient origins. Anthropologist
Joseph Henrich
Joseph Henrich (born 1968) is an American anthropologist and professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. Before arriving at Harvard, Henrich was a professor of psychology and economics at the University of British Columbia. H ...
noted that "the crucial insight from this work is that understanding distinct aspects of cooperation among these hunter-gatherers must incorporate an analysis of the dynamic processes at the population level." Christakis and his colleagues did similar work mapping the networks of the
Nyangatom people
The Nyangatom also known as Donyiro and pejoratively as Bumé are Nilotic agro-pastoralists inhabiting the border of southwestern Ethiopia, southeastern South Sudan, and the Ilemi Triangle. They speak the Nyangatom language.
Overview
The Nyang ...
of Sudan in 2016. His group has also demonstrated that social networks are deeply related to human cooperation.
These ideas are explored in Christakis' 2019 book, ''Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society''.
Work on the physiology of social networks, in particular with respect to the microbiome, started to appear in 2024, in ''Nature''. Computational biologist Nicola Segata observed that understanding the spread of the microbiome through the social network is "changing completely the way we think", because such spread suggests that conditions with links to the microbiome (such as hypertension, depression, and obesity) could spread from person to person due to biological contagion.
Beginning in 2010, Christakis' lab initiated a program of research to deploy social networks to improve welfare, health, and diverse other social phenomena—for example, facilitating the adoption of public health innovations in the developing world (e.g., India, Honduras),
understanding the origins of economic inequality (published in ''Nature'' in 2015),
or demonstrating the utility of autonomous agents (
AI "bots") in optimizing coordination in groups (published in ''Nature'' in 2017).
Economist
Simon Gächter
Simon Gächter (born 8 March 1965 in Nenzing, Vorarlberg) is an Austrian economist. He currently is professor of the psychology of economic decision making at the University of Nottingham.
Gächter attended the University of Vienna, where he re ...
noted that "the most striking insight from these findings
n 2015is the effect of wealth visibility on the dynamics of inequality: conspicuous inequality breeds more inequality. Although visibility of wealth does not change economic incentives in this experimental scenario, it invites social comparisons that... undermine cooperation and diminish social ties." Gachter also commented on the 2017 paper and its contributions to
evolutionary game theory
Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is the application of game theory to evolving populations in biology. It defines a framework of contests, strategies, and analytics into which Darwinism, Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 wi ...
.
The 2017 paper on bots
initiated a program of work on "hybrid systems" composed of humans and machines (endowed with AI) that reshape how humans interact not with the machines, but with each other. A 2020 paper in ''PNAS'' extended this idea by showing that physical robots could modify conversations among people interacting in groups. Another paper that year showed that simply programmed bots could re-engineer social connections among humans in networked groups in order to make them become more cooperative. A 2023 paper in ''PNAS'' showed that simple forms of AI could change humans' ethical behavior towards others (using a cyber-physical lab experiment involving remote-control robotic cars playing the game of
chicken
The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated subspecies of the red junglefowl (''Gallus gallus''), originally native to Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is now one of the most common and w ...
). A 2024 paper showed that a kind of simple bot could enhance the creativity of human groups. Christakis argued in 2019 that "the effects of AI on human-to-human interaction stand to be intense and far-reaching, and the advances rapid and broad. We must investigate systematically what second-order effects might emerge and discuss how to regulate them on behalf of the common good".
Christakis' lab has been supported by grants from the
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...
, the Pioneer Program of the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is an American philanthropic organization. It is the largest one focused solely on health. Based in Princeton, New Jersey, the foundation focuses on access to health care, public health, health equity, ...
, the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Gates Foundation is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported to be the third largest charitable foundation in the world, holding $ ...
, and by other funders. In 2019, his lab received support to extend their work to studies of the
human microbiota
Human microbiota are microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea) found in a specific environment. They can be found in the stomach, intestines, skin, genitals and other parts of the body. Various body parts have diverse microorganisms. S ...
from the Nomis Foundation.
Medicine
Christakis has practiced as a home hospice physician and in consultative palliative medicine. He took care of indigent, home-bound, dying patients in the South Side of Chicago while at the University of Chicago, from 1995 to 2001. During this time, he was also active in translating research results into national policy changes with respect to end-of-life care in the USA; for instance, he testified before the US Senate Special Committee on Aging in 2000 (regarding barriers to hospice use, prognostication, and the cost-effectiveness of hospice).
Christakis has worked with terminally ill patients and their families as an attending physician on the Palliative Medicine Consult Service at
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvar ...
in Boston and at
Mount Auburn Hospital
Mount Auburn Hospital (MAH) is a community hospital with a patient capacity of about 200 beds in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its main campus is located at 330 Mount Auburn St, in the neighborhood of West Cambridge (neighborhood), West Cambridge. I ...
.
He is currently associated with the Yale School of Medicine.
Books
Christakis' first book, ''Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care'', was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1999 (), and has been translated into Japanese.
The book, based on his dissertation, explored the role of prognosis in medical thought and practice, documenting and explaining how physicians are socialized to avoid making prognoses. It argues that the prognoses patients receive, even from the best-trained American doctors, are driven not only by professional norms but also by religious, moral, and even quasi-magical beliefs (such as the "
self-fulfilling prophecy A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that comes true at least in part as a result of a person's belief or expectation that the prediction would come true. In the phenomena, people tend to act the way they have been expected to in order to mak ...
").
His second book, ''Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives'', was co-authored with James Fowler and published by
Little, Brown Spark in 2009 ().
It was awarded the "Books for a Better Life" Award in 2009 and has been translated into 20 languages. ''Connected'' draws on previously published and unpublished studies and makes several new conclusions about the influence of social networks on human health and behavior. In ''Connected'', Christakis and Fowler put forward their "
three degrees of influence" rule, which theorizes that each person's social influence can stretch to roughly three degrees of separation (to the friend of a friend of a friend) before it fades out.
Christakis' third book, ''Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society'', was published by Little, Brown Spark in 2019 (). It made
''The New York Times'' Best Seller list in its debut week. It was widely and favorably reviewed.
For instance,
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...
described the book as "optimistic and terrific."
''Blueprint'' explores the idea that evolution has given humans a suite of beneficial capacities, including love, friendship, social networks, cooperation, and learning; humans have innate proclivities to make a good society, one that is similar worldwide. "For too long," Christakis writes, "the scientific community has been overly focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for tribalism, violence, selfishness, and cruelty. The bright side has been denied the attention it deserves." Overall, ''Blueprint'' advances an argument about
sociodicy, that is, the "vindication of society despite its failures".
It proposes a list of eight attributes of societies that are innately favored due to human evolutionary history.
Christakis' fourth book, ''Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live'', was published by Little, Brown Spark in October 2020 (). It was widely and favorably reviewed and was called "magisterial", "gripping", and "provocative". It was long-listed for the
PEN America
PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922, and headquartered in New York City, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose goal is to raise awareness for the protection of free expression in the United States and worldwide th ...
EO Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. ''Apollo's Arrow'' provides an account of the origins and course of the
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...
pandemic and its end, biologically and socially (in what Christakis has compared to the
Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western world, Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultura ...
of the 20th century). In essence, the book argues that "plagues are not new to our species — they are just new to us".
Christakis has also co-edited two clinical textbooks on end-of-life care: ''Prognosis in advanced cancer'' (2008) and the ''Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine'' (2009), both published by
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
.
Public intellectual
In addition to his scientific research and books, Christakis has contributed to popular media as a public
intellectual
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and Human self-reflection, reflection about the nature of reality, especially the nature of society and proposed solutions for its normative problems. Coming from the wor ...
, in a range of publications and on a range of topics. He has said he is invested in "advancing the public understanding of science", and he typically writes about matters at the intersection of the social, biological, and/or computational sciences.
For instance, in addition to his book about the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, ''Apollo's Arrow'', released in 2020, Christakis published numerous essays helping to advance understanding of the social, economic, psychological, and epidemiological aspects of the pandemic. In ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'', he forecast the long course of the pandemic in 2020, outlined optimal responses, and provided a kind of post-mortem in 2024 (outlining how the pandemic would leave us with "public forgetting and private remembrance"). In ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'', he wrote about the role of compassion during epidemics.
In ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 185 ...
'', he wrote about school closures, risk perception, and public health responses. In ''
FiveThirtyEight
''FiveThirtyEight'', also rendered as ''538'', was an American website that focused on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States.
The website, which took its name from the number of electors in the U ...
'', he showed how voting in the primary elections did not worsen the course of the pandemic. Early in the pandemic (in August 2020), he wrote an invited essay for ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
'' about how intrinsic properties of
SARS-CoV-2
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had the Novel coronavirus, provisional nam ...
would make the
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...
pandemic more challenging to fight. The magazine relied on him for subsequent assessments of the long-term impact of the pandemic. In an interview for ''The Atlantic'', Christakis also discussed the importance of free expression in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.
For ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', Christakis has written on prognostication, university education, free expression, and the evolution of social sciences. His essay on social science was said to have "created quite a stir", and it prompted debate and commentary. For ''The Washington Post'', he has written not only about COVID
but also on mass shootings and fatherhood. For the ''
Boston Review
''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...
'', with respect to inequality, he argued that recent research showed that "the luxuries of others matter if we can see them". He has also written about how to "construct novel, unnatural social systems based on the predictable ways that humans act" for ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...
''; the role of social artificial intelligence for ''The Atlantic''; and about social network dynamics for the ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...
''. He published an article in ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
'' in 2023 on the social and economic
spillover effects of
AI, arguing that AI systems will change how humans treat each other.
In 2012, he wrote a series of online columns for ''
Time
Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' with his wife,
Erika Christakis, on a range of topics from academic dishonesty to women in the armed services. For the same publication, in 2011, he wrote about biosocial science, and, in 2019, about the link between cooperation and individuality, arguing that such a perspective was useful "in a moment when too much tribalism is causing devastating problems". In 2024, he argued that poor decision-making by corporate and nonprofit boards could partly be understood based on their internal network structure.
Christakis has also appeared periodically on TV and radio, commenting on social networks and social interactions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other matters, including on NPR,
''
Amanpour & Company'', and other venues.
Krista Tippett of NPR has said his perspective on human goodness "deepens and refreshes". He has been featured in a number of documentaries about science, including ''
Through the Wormhole
''Through the Wormhole'' is an American science Documentary film, documentary television series narrated and hosted by American actor Morgan Freeman. It began airing on Science Channel in the United States on June 9, 2010. The series concluded i ...
'', ''
Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?'', and ''This Emotional Life'' (on
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
). Interviews with Christakis have appeared in ''The New York Times'', ''The Atlantic'',
and elsewhere. He has been a repeat guest on many leading podcasts, including
Joe Rogan
Joseph James Rogan (born August 11, 1967) is an American podcaster, Ultimate Fighting Championship, UFC color commentator, comedian, actor, and former television host. He hosts The Joe Rogan Experience, ''The Joe Rogan Experience'', which is o ...
,
Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, determinism, neuroscience, meditation ...
,
Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of '' Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientif ...
, and Reason.
Christakis has given two mainstage TED talks, appeared at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and been a frequent contributor to the online salon of leading scientists and intellectuals
Edge
Edge or EDGE may refer to:
Technology Computing
* Edge computing, a network load-balancing system
* Edge device, an entry point to a computer network
* Adobe Edge, a graphical development application
* Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...
, including answering ten of its annual questions, from 2009 to 2019 and giving talks on how "social networks are like the eye" in 2008, on "a new kind of social science for the 21st century" in 2012, and on the science of social connections in 2013.
Advocacy for free expression
Christakis has been involved in the defense of free expression for some time. At
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...
in 2012, he and his wife came to the defense of minority students who were using satire to criticize the elite
final clubs at that institution. They suggested that the critics might be "more concerned with ugly words than the underlying problems" and that policing free expression on campus "denies students the opportunity to learn to think for themselves." They argued that it was important for Harvard students to have confidence and to develop the capacity and maturity to discuss contentious issues, rather than staying silent.
In April 2020, Christakis expressed concern that, in the setting of the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, hospitals and medical schools were seeking to silence faculty and staff who were highlighting problems with the response; he stated that "clamping down on people who are speaking is a kind of idiocy of the highest order."
In July 2020, Christakis was one of the 153 signers of "
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate" (also known as the "Harper's Letter") that expressed concern that "the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted".
In 2021, Christakis was asked to join the advisory council of the
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). In 2022, he joined the advisory council of
Heterodox Academy
Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a Nonprofit organization, nonprofit advocacy group of academics working to counteract what they see as a lack of viewpoint diversity on college campuses, specifically political diversity. The organization was founded in ...
.
In 2023, Christakis was the recipient of the Silverglate Award for Championing Free Expression at the inaugural gala held by the
Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in New York City.
Yale Halloween case
In 2015, Christakis and his wife,
Erika, were involved in a case arising from advice about Halloween costumes at
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
. In October of that year, the Intercultural Affairs Council at Yale (a group of fourteen administrators) sent an email to undergraduates that recommended students be careful when choosing Halloween outfits, suggesting they avoid various sorts of costumes incorporating potentially offensive elements and including a link to a Pinterest page with recommended and non-recommended costumes.
In response, Erika (a lecturer on early childhood education at the
Yale Child Study Center
The Yale Child Study Center is a department at the Yale University School of Medicine. The center conducts research and provides clinical services and medical training related to children and families. Topics of investigation include autism and r ...
) wrote an email on October 29 on the role of free expression in universities. She argued, from a developmental perspective, that students might wish to consider whether administrators should provide guidance on Halloween attire or whether students would prefer to "dress themselves". She noted that her husband's advice was that "if you don't like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society".
This e-mail played a role in protests on campus that received national attention in the United States. Christakis and his wife were criticized by some students for placing "the burden of confrontation, education, and maturity on the offended". Other students, however, pointed out that Erika Christakis was defending the rights to free expression of all Yale students and expressing confidence in them and in their capacity to discuss and confront such issues among themselves.
During the episode, some students "
sked PresidentSalovey to remove Nicholas and Erika Christakis from their positions at the helm of Silliman College", and, in a separate development, over 400 faculty members signed a letter on the broader issue of supporting "greater diversity". Ninety-one Yale faculty members signed a different letter supporting the Christakises, and this letter noted that the couple themselves distinguished support for freedom of expression from supporting the content of such expression (the Christakises had noted that they would find many of the same costumes offensive as some students would). Christakis stepped down from his role at Silliman College eight months later, at the end of the academic year, a step ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 185 ...
'' later decried (noting "when Yale's history is written, they should be regarded as collateral damage harmed by people who abstracted away their humanity").
In a subsequent op-ed in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' (his only published comment on the events), Christakis argued: "Open, extended conversations among students themselves are essential not only to the pursuit of truth but also to deep moral learning and to righteous social progress." A year later, commentators condemned how students, administrators, and faculty had behaved at Yale (and linked to substantial video footage of the events). In her only published remarks regarding what happened, published a year later, in October 2016,
Erika Christakis described the circumstances (including threats) that she had faced in an Op-Ed published in ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
''. Alum
James Kirchick and former dean of the Yale Law School
Anthony T. Kronman have since criticized the university administration for abandoning or not supporting Christakis and his wife.
The incident led to some students being called members of "
Generation Snowflake". In January 2016,
Bill Maher
William MaherStated on ''Finding Your Roots'', January 12, 2016, PBS; on a series that lists "Jr." and "Sr." distinctions, Bill Maher's birth name was listed simply as William Maher, while his father was William Aloysius Maher Jr., and his pa ...
expressed consternation at how the Yale students had behaved. In April 2017, an episode of ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening, James L. Brooks and Sam Simon for the Fox Broadcasting Company. It is a Satire (film and television), satirical depiction of American life ...
'' titled "
Caper Chase" satirized the events. Also in 2017, a short documentary was released about the episode, arguing that they reflected a collision between "old values" centered on reason and debate, on the one hand, and "administrative bloat" and a shift to a "consumer mentality" on the other (this documentary also noted that Christakis comes from a multi-racial family and has African-American and Chinese siblings).
''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' published a coda regarding the episode in August 2018, upon Christakis' appointment as a
Sterling Professor
Sterling Professor, the highest academic rank at Yale University, is awarded to a Academic tenure in North America, tenured faculty member considered the best in their field. It is akin to the rank of distinguished professor at other universities. ...
, Yale's highest faculty rank.
The case has been discussed in at least twenty nonfiction books.
Philosopher
Russell Blackford
Russell Blackford (born 1954) is an Australian writer, philosopher, and literary critic.
Early life and education
Blackford was born in Sydney, and grew up in the city of Lake Macquarie, near Newcastle, New South Wales. After graduating with ...
provides a very precise and comprehensive timeline. Some of these books noted the "sexism" and "irony" that, in a key episode that was part of the events (when Christakis was surrounded by 150 students in a quad for two hours), the students wished to hold Christakis responsible for his wife's email. Commentator
Douglas Murray summarizes statements by students based on his review of extensive video footage released by the students themselves of the events in the quad, and he notes Christakis' emphasis on "our common humanity".
Many of these books have expressed concern at the "illiberal" actions of the students (and of many administrators and faculty) at Yale. The behavior of the students also sparked a minor controversy at Harvard Law School when a student there wrote a piece decrying the Christakis' treatment as "fascism" in the ''
Harvard Law Record''; criticized for publishing the piece, the ''Record''s liberal editor-in-chief wrote that his role was "editor-in-chief, not thought-policeman-in-chief." The case has also influenced fictional portrayals of such events.
A 2023 article in ''
The Chronicle of Higher Education
''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is an American newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals, including staff members and administrators. A subscription ...
'' argued that the event signaled a worrisome sea change in attitudes on American university campuses, one "which in retrospect appears a compact fable containing all or almost all of the elements of our disorienting campus present". A "free speech summit" organized by
PEN America
PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922, and headquartered in New York City, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose goal is to raise awareness for the protection of free expression in the United States and worldwide th ...
at Harvard University in 2024 also treated the event as a pivotal one, reflecting a "fundamental shift in campus climate".
Christakis has spoken publicly about the events only rarely. In an October 2017 interview with
Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, determinism, neuroscience, meditation ...
, he discussed parts of the situation he faced, framing the events at Yale in the broader context of what was happening on many campuses during that time period; Harris noted that Christakis had "the imperturbability of a saint." In March 2019, Christakis told
Frank Bruni that, partly in response to the events, he worked to complete a long-standing book project on the origins of goodness in society (''Blueprint'').
Personal life
Christakis resides in
Norwich, Vermont
Norwich is a town in Windsor County, Vermont, United States. The population was 3,612 at the 2020 census. Home to some of the state of Vermont's wealthiest residents, the municipality is a commuter town for nearby Hanover, New Hampshire acros ...
. He is married to early childhood educator and author
Erika Christakis and they have four children, one of whom they adopted later in life, while serving as foster parents. His hobbies have included
Shotokan
is a style of karate, developed from various martial arts by Gichin Funakoshi (1868–1957) and his son Gigo (Yoshitaka) Funakoshi (1906–1945). Gichin Funakoshi was born in Okinawa and is widely credited with popularizing "karate do" thro ...
karate
(; ; Okinawan language, Okinawan pronunciation: ), also , is a martial arts, martial art developed in the Ryukyu Kingdom. It developed from the Okinawan martial arts, indigenous Ryukyuan martial arts (called , "hand"; ''tī'' in Okinawan) un ...
(as noted by his instructor,
Kazumi Tabata) and making
maple syrup
Maple syrup is a sweet syrup made from the sap of maple trees. In cold climates, these trees store starch in their trunks and roots before winter; the starch is then converted to sugar that rises in the sap in late winter and early spring. Ma ...
.
Published works
Books
* ''Death Foretold: Prophecy and Prognosis in Medical Care'' (1999)
* ''Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives'' (2009) - with James Fowler
* ''Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society'' (2019)
* ''Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live'' (2020)
Selected scientific papers
*
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* Alexander, M; Forastiere, L; Gupta, S; Christakis, NA. (2022). "Algorithms for seeding social networks can enhance the adoption of a public health intervention in urban India". ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences''. 119 (30): e2120742119.
doi:10.1073/pnas.2120742119.
PMC 9335263.
PMID
PubMed is an openly accessible, free database which includes primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of ...
35862454.
* Shirado, H; Kasahara, S; Christakis, NA. (2023). "Emergence and Collapse of Reciprocity in Semi-Automatic Driving Coordination Experiments With Humans". ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences''. 120 (51): e2307804120.
doi:10.1073/pnas.2307804120.
* Airoldi, EM; Christakis, NA. (2024). "Induction of Social Contagion for Diverse Outcomes in Structured Experiments in Isolated Villages". ''Science'' 384: eadi5147.
doi:10.1126/science.adi5147.
* Beghini F; Pullman J; Alexander M; Shridhar SV; Prinster D; Singh A; Juarez RM; Airolid, EM; Brito IL; and Christakis, NA. (2024). "Gut microbiome strain-sharing within isolated village social networks". ''Nature''
doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08222-1.
References
External links
Nicholas Christakis, Yale University
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Christakis, Nicholas A.
1962 births
American people of Greek descent
American sociologists
Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Harvard Medical School alumni
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alumni
Harvard Medical School faculty
Living people
Medical sociologists
University of Pennsylvania alumni
Yale College alumni
Yale University faculty
Yale Sterling Professors
Members of the National Academy of Medicine