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Tad,

I recommend that you contact the authors of that biography and pass this
information along to them. I am sure that they will be happy to receive
feedback (though I also believe that their practice includes updating
only on very slow time scales, so it is admittedly unlikely that this will
yield a change in the article).

Note that in this case it was a couple of specific mathematicians who
ignored that work in their biography rather than mathematicians in
general. :) I did note in advance pretty explicitly that the biography
did not contain a complete picture, so globally I agree with you. Indeed
it would have been nice for certain additional items to be in there,
though I won't commit on the specifics the way you have, as I merely read
that biography (and your note) as an interested observer and don't feel
that I have enough knowledge to make such a claim. Perhaps someone
else will take up the task of writing a short biography of Harary that is
more balanced.

-----
Mason




On Mon, 3 Jun 2013, "Tadeusz Sozański" wrote:

> Dear Mason and fellow Socnetters
>
> It was interesting to read Frank Harary's recent bio and to learn from it
> that mathematicians tend to almost completely ignore Harary's work (also
> his purely mathematical contributions) oriented toward 'social'
> applications, as well as his ties (by the way, can someone reconstruct
> Harary's ego-network - restricted to collaborators in the social
> sciences?) with the circle of researchers who worked (in Ann Arbor,
> Michigan) under the banner of 'Group Dynamics' (the 2nd edition of the
> collection of papers so entitled, ed. by Cartwright and Zander, has
> Cartwright and Harary's paper: 'Structural Balance: A Generalization of
> Heider's Theory').
>
> Harary's mathematical biography should at least mention his first paper on
> 'signed graphs' ('On the Notion of Balance of a Signed Graph', Michigan
> Math. Journal, 1953), which was the basis for the paper with Catrwright.
>
> Let me mention in this connection Harary's two other contributions to SNA
> that are not included in the bibliography in Freeman's book ('The
> Development of SNA', 2004), namely, 'Cosi fan tutte: a Sstructural Study',
> Psychological Reports 13, 1963; 'A Structural Analysis of the Situation in
> the Middle East in 1956', J. of Conflict Resolution, 1961. The second
> paper inspired me to carry out (in my unpubished Ph.D. thesis on signed
> graphs) a similar analysis (a signed graph as a model of friendly-hostile
> relation in a set of nation-states) for Falklands conflict.
>
> On my meeting with Harary in London during the 1995 Sunbelt - see section
> 12 (pp. 17-19) of my unpublished paper [Once More on Translating
> INSNA...), the 'strangest paper I have ever written' that is available on
> my personal website in the file delingua.pdf
>
> http://www.cyf-kr.edu.pl/~ussozans/delingua.pdf
>
> Tad Sozanski
> www.cyf-kr.edu.pl/~ussozans/
> (see Miscellanea for the 'strangest paper').
>
>> Hi,
>> I just noticed that my favorite online source for mini-biographies added
> an entry for Frank Harary last month (and I thought that some of you might
>> be interested in this):
>> http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Harary.html
>> This does focus on his mathematical side, given the intended audience
> for
>> the biography, but hopefully you'll still find it interesting.
>> -----
>> Mason
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Mason A. Porter
>> University Lecturer (and Tutorial Fellow, Somerville College)
>> Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
>> Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford
>> Homepage: http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/~porterm, Skype: tepid451
>> Blog: http://masonporter.blogspot.com/
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> "Few things are deadlier than me armed with a red pen." (Me)
>
>
>

-----
Mason

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mason A. Porter
  University Lecturer (and Tutorial Fellow, Somerville College)
  Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
  Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford

  Homepage: http://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/~porterm, Skype: tepid451
  Blog: http://masonporter.blogspot.com/
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  "Few things are deadlier than me armed with a red pen." (Me)
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------


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