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Mathematician Genealogy

Just like a biological family tree Mathematicians are linked to each other through their advisors,  students, and their students' students (descendants). This is called Mathematics Genealogy and since 1990 a database compiled and maintained by North Dakota State University has a search function for you to find yourself (if you have a degree in math) or your favorite mathematician. Find the Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) here.


In the past decade, the database has been analyzed as a graph with 200,037 vertices in 2016. The top advisory currently is C.C. Jay Kuo (MIT 1987) with 159 Students and 160 descendants. The highest advisor whom I recognized by name was David Hilbert (U Konigsberg 1885) at #30 with 76 students and 35,407 descendants.

Source: Nature
Depending on if a mathematician spends their career in Academics will depend on how their branches spread in the tree. Although due to mathematicians limited time spent publishing their work their are many leaves but few branches with most mathematicians falling in to 24 "families" and only 84 distinct "families."

In 2016, when the database was analyzed by Floriana Gargiulo at the University of Namur, Belgium, the largest "family" was lead by Sigismondo Polcastro, a physician and medical professor in the fifteenth century.

Iranian Mathematician:
Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī 

Currently Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī has the most descendants with 186,550 and it took me 13 clicks to come across Leonardo da Vinci and 30 to hit Carl Friedrich Gauß.

Gauß and Euler are common vertices on the MGP graphs with many mathematicians being able to link their branches back to these names eventually. They are the Kevin Bacons of mathematics. While they both advised relatively small cohorts of students (Euler: 6, Gauß: 15) their descendants are numerous (Euler: 129,283, Gauß: 101,687).

Source: Nature

The MGP can also be used to track the trends of mathematics worldwide and how cultural events like WWII effect where mathematicians are earning their degrees and doing their research.

In my classroom in the future I would love to link this information with the Mathematician Project I give my students. It would be fun to create a web of Mathematician connections with the research and visuals they create.

How do you think you would use this information? (Besides, just clicking until you recognize a name, as I tend to do.)

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