NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS, MD, PHD, is both a physician and a social scientist. Medicine and social science are like distant cousins who meet from time to time, see that they have much in common, and then get into an argument. Christakis has been trying to referee these arguments for years, sometimes with surprising success. He is a professor of medical sociology in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School, professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and professor of medicine and an attending physician in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006. After finishing his clinical training in internal medicine, he combined his research with clinical practice as a hospice physician, looking for ways to improve end-of-life care. Since 1999, he has been investigating how social factors and social interactions affect health and longevity. Christakis is best known for his studies on how social networks form and operate. When he is not in the lab, he teaches students in many parts of Harvard University and in Harvard-affiliated hospitals, and is regularly voted a “favorite professor” by Harvard undergraduates because of his engaging lecture style and open office hours. He was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009.
JAMES H. FOWLER, PHD, is a new kind of political scientist. In an effort to connect with the natural sciences, he pushes the boundaries of his field to identify social and biological forces that underlie human nature. Fowler’s work as a Peace Corps volunteer in cholera-stricken villages in Ecuador motivated him to ask the question, why are some people so much better at facing group challenges than others? He studied politics at Harvard University where he earned his PhD, and he has since devoted his life to unifying the study of political outcomes with the study of other natural processes. He is currently an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, in the Department of Political Science and the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems. In addition to his work on social networks, Fowler is well known for his research on the evolution of cooperation, behavioral economics, political participation, and genopolitics (the study of the genetic basis of political behavior). While at Harvard he won several teaching awards, but now his students know him best as the professor who found the first scientific evidence for the “Colbert bump,” a phenomenon in which political candidates tend to receive a boost in support after appearing on Stephen Colbert’s comedy talk show.