Ronald Stuart Burt (born 1949) is an American sociologist. He is the Charles M. Harper Leadership Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University. 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.

This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. (January 2024)

Originally a pre-medical major, Burt earned his B.A. in social and behavioral sciences from Johns Hopkins University in 1971 with a focus on social psychology. He earned a M.A. in Sociology from The State University of New York at Albany in 1973 working with Nan Lin. He moved to the University of Chicago to work with mathematical sociology professor James Samuel Coleman and earned his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1977.^[2] 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 INSEAD and has held various organizational development positions at Raytheon.

He currently resides in the Milan 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, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Social Networks, Sociological Inquiry, and others.