ACADEMIC GENEALOGY

The intent of the Mathematics Genealogy Project is to compile information about all mathematicians of the world who have received a doctorate in mathematics (or allied fields), specifying the institution and year of the degree, title of the dissertation, and name of the doctoral advisor. The data is arranged on the Project website as a genealogical tree linked through doctoral advisors. Ancestral branches end when advisors are not known.

In earlier centuries the advisor/student relationship may not have been as formal as it is in modern institutions. In these cases the link may reflect a mentor/student relationship, which still represents the intellectual development of mathematics. One should be aware that during certain periods Ph.D. students had dual advisors, which will of course result in the genealogical tree branching in a reverse sense.

At present the Project is under the direction of the Department of Mathematics, North Dakota State University, which maintains the data bank as a service to the American Mathematical Society and the mathematics communities of the world.

As of January 30, 2008, there were 115,954 mathematicians registered with the Mathematics Genealogy Project.

The Project can be reached with the link

www.genealogy.ams.org

Below, a portion of the genealogical tree is reproduced, indicating the doctoral ancestry of William Greenberg.

E. Weigel

Leipzig 1650

                        O. Mencke G. Leibniz

Leibzig 1668 Altdorf 1666

J. Wichmannshausen Ja. Bernoulli

Leibzig 1685 Basel

C. Hausen Jo. Bernoulli

Wittenberg 1713 Basel 1694

A. Kaestner L. Euler

Leibzig 1739 Basel 1726

J. Pfaff  J. Lagrange

Göttingen 1786 Torino

/ \

C. Gauss S. Poisson J-B. Fourier

Helmstedt 1799 E.P. Paris 1800       Paris

\ /

C. Gerling G. Dirichlet

Göttingen 1812 Bonn 1827

J. Plucker R. Lipschitz

Marburg 1823 Berlin 1853

                                                                         \                                  /

F. Klein

Bonn 1868

                        F. Lindemann

Erlangen 1873

                                 A. Sommerfeld

                                                             Königsberg 1891

                                    K. Herzfeld

                                                        München 1914

                                J. Wheeler

                                                            Johns Hopkins 1933

A. Wightman

Princeton 1949

A. Jaffe

Princeton 1966

William Greenberg

Harvard 1970