Mathematical genealogy
Having a PhD student is like having a child. I have had many such “children” graduate, and have another two “on the way”. (See here for my offspring.)
Going in the other direction, here is my family tree, compiled from the Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP). Each person advised the one below them. Hover over a portrait (or tap it) to see who they were.
Many people have two or more advisors, so there are multiple “lines of ascent” (as there are with regular family trees). I am showing two of many possible ancestry lines here, which happened to reconnect in the 1600s.
-
Jakob Thomasius
B. 1622, Leipzig. D. 1684, Leipzig.
Philosopher and philologist at Leipzig, and the teacher both branches share. He supervised Leibniz's 1666 philosophy degree and Otto Mencke's 1665 thesis, which is where the two lines below separate.
-
Gottfried Leibniz
B. 1646, Leipzig. D. 1716, Hanover.
German philosopher, mathematician and logician, best known for inventing calculus independently of Newton.
His other advisors were Erhard Weigel at Jena (pictured, professor of mathematics there from 1653), Bartholomäus Schwendendörffer at Altdorf, and Christiaan Huygens in Paris.
-
Nicolas Malebranche
B. 1638, Paris. D. 1715, Paris.
Oratorian priest and Cartesian philosopher, author of De la recherche de la vérité (1674). He came to mathematics late, after reading Descartes, and his Paris circle carried the new calculus into France.
The MGP records his link to Leibniz to mark intellectual descent, not an actual supervision, so treat this edge as a courtesy.
-
Jacob Bernoulli
B. 1654, Basel. D. 1705, Basel.
One of the famous Bernoulli family. His contributions include the law of large numbers in probability theory and work on the convergence of infinite series.
-
Johann Bernoulli
B. 1667, Basel. D. 1748, Basel.
Jacob's brother, elected a fellow of the academies of Paris, Berlin, London, St Petersburg and Bologna. Known as the "Archimedes of his age", he solved the catenary problem (alongside Leibniz and Huygens), and the rule for limits of functions commonly attributed to his student de l'Hôpital is his.
-
Leonhard Euler
B. 1707, Basel. D. 1783, St Petersburg.
One of the most prolific mathematicians in history, with over 800 papers covering every branch of mathematics known in his day, an influential series of calculus textbooks, and books on a dozen other fields.
-
Joseph Lagrange
B. 1736, Turin. D. 1813, Paris.
Developed the theory of differential equations and produced many new results in number theory. His earlier work on permutations of the roots of polynomial equations is now seen as a forerunner of group theory, and he is remembered in the Lagrange multiplier.
Lagrange was never Euler's student in any formal sense. The MGP lists the relationship as "epistolary correspondence" on the calculus of variations.
-
Siméon Poisson
B. 1781, Pithiviers. D. 1840, Sceaux.
"Life is only good for two things: to do mathematics and to teach it." Best known for his work on probability, including the Poisson distribution. Laplace was his second advisor.
-
Michel Chasles
B. 1793, Épernon. D. 1880, Paris.
Worked on projective and enumerative geometry, and wrote a history of geometric method that shaped how the subject was taught. The Chasles relation for directed segments is his.
Late in life he spent a fortune on thousands of forged letters purportedly from Pascal, Newton and Galileo, and defended their authenticity for years before the forger was tried and convicted.
-
Gaston Darboux
B. 1842, Nîmes. D. 1917, Paris.
Geometer at the Sorbonne who reshaped the differential geometry of surfaces. Anyone who has taught introductory analysis knows him through Darboux sums and the Darboux integral.
-
Édouard Goursat
B. 1858, Lanzac. D. 1936, Paris.
Sharpened Cauchy's integral theorem by dropping the continuity assumption on the derivative, giving the Cauchy–Goursat theorem. His three-volume Cours d'analyse mathématique trained a generation of French analysts.
-
Georges Darmois
B. 1888, Éply. D. 1960, Paris.
Started in differential geometry, then turned to statistics, joining the Institut de Statistique de l'Université de Paris (founded by Émile Borel) in 1925 and later becoming its second director. The first statistician in my line: the Darmois–Koopman–Pitman theorem characterises the exponential family, and the Darmois–Skitovich theorem characterises the normal distribution.
-
Daniel Dugué
B. 1912. D. 1987.
French probabilist who worked on estimation theory and characteristic functions, and who succeeded Darmois in directing the Paris statistics institute.
-
Paul Deheuvels
B. 1948. D. 2026
Works on empirical processes, extreme value theory and dependence. His 1979 paper on the empirical dependence function, building on related work by Rüschendorf a few years earlier, gave the empirical copula used in dependence modelling today its lasting form. Elected to the Académie des Sciences.
-
Adrian Raftery
B. 1955, Dublin.
Bayesian model averaging, model-based clustering, and the probabilistic population projections the United Nations now uses. Professor of Statistics and Sociology at the University of Washington.
-
Otto Mencke
B. 1644, Oldenburg. D. 1707, Leipzig.
Professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig, and founder in 1682 of Acta Eruditorum, the first learned journal in Germany. Leibniz published much of his calculus there.
-
J. C. Wichmannshausen
B. 1663, Ilsenburg. D. 1727, Wittenberg.
Orientalist and professor at Wittenberg, and Mencke's son-in-law. His dissertation was on divorce under natural law, which makes him the least mathematical of my ancestors.
-
Christian August Hausen
B. 1693, Dresden. D. 1743, Leipzig.
Professor of mathematics at Leipzig. He built one of the early electrostatic friction machines and studied the sparks it produced.
-
A. G. Kästner
B. 1719, Leipzig. D. 1800, Göttingen.
Professor at Göttingen, prolific textbook writer, historian of mathematics, and a well-known writer of epigrams. Gauss studied at Göttingen during Kästner's time there, though he reportedly found Kästner's lectures too elementary to attend.
-
Johann Tobias Mayer
B. 1752, Göttingen. D. 1830, Göttingen.
Physicist and mathematician at Göttingen, and son of the astronomer Tobias Mayer. He wrote on geometry and on the design of angle-measuring instruments.
-
Enno Heeren Dirksen
B. 1788, Eilsum. D. 1850, Paris.
Professor in Berlin, where his students included Jacobi, Göpel and Heine. His own work was on the calculus of variations and transcendental analysis.
-
Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi
B. 1804, Potsdam. D. 1851, Berlin.
Founded the theory of elliptic functions alongside Abel, and gave us the Jacobian determinant and the Hamilton–Jacobi equation. His advice to students was to invert.
-
Wilhelm Scheibner
B. 1826, Ölsnitz. D. 1908, Leipzig.
Professor at Leipzig, working on analysis and number theory.
Story's other Leipzig advisor was Carl Neumann, who also studied under Jacobi (through Hesse and Richelot), so both routes rejoin here.
-
William Story
B. 1850, Boston. D. 1930, Worcester.
Worked on algebraic problems and was an important player in the development of American mathematics. He helped found the American Journal of Mathematics.
-
Solomon Lefschetz
B. 1884, Moscow. D. 1972, Princeton.
Russian-born mathematician who became the main source of the algebraic aspects of topology.
-
John Tukey
B. 1915, New Bedford. D. 2000, New Brunswick.
The most innovative statistician of the 20th century. He invented the box plot and the stem-and-leaf plot, co-invented the fast Fourier transform, and contributed heavily to jackknife estimation and spectral density estimation. He is also credited with the words "software" and "bit".
-
David Brillinger
B. 1937, Toronto.
Prolific researcher with over 200 papers, best known for his work on stochastic processes and time series, especially spectral analysis and earthquakes. His 1975 book Time Series: Data Analysis and Theory has been particularly influential. At the University of California, Berkeley.
-
Peter Guttorp
B. 1949.
Uses stochastic models in hydrology, atmospheric science, geophysics, environmental science and haematology. At the University of Washington.
-
Gary Grunwald
B. 1954.
Gary spent the first part of his career on time series analysis, particularly non-Gaussian time series. Then he worked at the University of Colorado on nutrition, physiology, and cardiovascular health. Guttorp and Raftery jointly supervised his thesis, which is why the tree above has two branches. Website
-
Rob J Hyndman
B. 1967, Melbourne.
Peter Brockwell was also my advisor, and he was supervised by Joe Moyal, but then the line stops --- the MGP does not record who Moyal's advisor was.