Academic pedigree

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Analogous to a family tree , an academic family tree represents the relationship between academic teachers and students. This allows “scientific schools” to be identified, which can often be traced back to well-known personalities who founded or shaped a science. For mathematics , the project tries Mathematics Genealogy Project to provide this for the theoretical chemistry project Theoretical Chemistry Genealogy Project .

methodology

To compile an academic family tree, dissertations from a department are recorded as extensively as possible and linked to a family tree. As parents of a scientist, the supervisor of his dissertation, possibly his postdoctoral degree and habilitation , is assigned to him, as his children are the scientists who did his doctorate or habilitation or were supervised by him as postdocs . In this way, “scientific schools” can be identified, which can often be traced back to well-known scientists who founded a science or a branch of it, or who have strongly shaped it. In both the Mathematics Genealogy Project and the Theoretical Chemistry Genealogy Project, branches go back to Carl Friedrich Gauß . Until the 18th / 19th In the 19th century, it was not uncommon in the natural sciences that no (written) dissertation was prepared; instead of dissertations, student / teacher ratios are used to examine traditions and schools. Occasionally, scientists who have had the same academic teachers are referred to as academic siblings.

Academic family tree of Werner Heisenberg (excerpt)

Examples

  • In Werner Heisenberg many young scientists have a PhD, and he also supervised a large number of postdocs who became his academic children or descendants. He himself did his doctorate with Arnold Sommerfeld , was a postdoctoral fellow with David Hilbert and Niels Bohr and completed his habilitation with Max Born , who thus became his academic parents. His academic family tree provides an overview as a list and tree structure
  • The chemist Robert B. Woodward also received a considerable number of doctorates, and he, too, supervised many postdocs, his academic children. He took his own doctoral examination with Avery Adrian Morton and James Flack Norris . He was a postdoctoral fellow with Elmer P. Kohler . So you are his academic parents. A list and a tree structure show the relationships.
  • The Mathematics Genealogy Project shows that Carl Friedrich Gauß (1777–1855), who himself only supervised twelve doctoral students, meanwhile (October 2019) has more than 94,000 "scientific offspring" through them. Since the database does not yet contain a complete data set with all doctoral students of all of Gauß's 'descendants' and the number increases with each dissertation in his descendants, this number will continue to rise. In December 2017 it was still around 81,000.

Web links

Commons : Academic Family Tree  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Homepage of the Mathematics Genealogy Project , accessed December 27, 2017.
  2. ↑ A Labor of Love: The Mathematics Genealogy Project Allyn Jackson in Notices of the AMS September 2007, accessed December 27, 2017.
  3. ↑ The Academic Family Tree compiles family trees from 38 academic disciplines , accessed on December 26, 2017.
  4. ↑ Priya Narayan Mathematics Genealogy Networks Master thesis 2010-2011 University of Oxford Page 31, accessed on October 18, 2019
  5. ^ Heisenberg's academic family tree as a list ; accessed on December 29, 2017.
  6. ↑ Heisenberg's academic family tree as a tree structure ; accessed on December 29, 2017.
  7. ↑ Woodward academic family tree as a list ; accessed on December 29, 2017.
  8. ↑ Woodward academic family tree as a tree structure ; accessed on December 29, 2017.
  9. ^ Entry by Carl Friedrich Gauß in , Mathematics Genealogy Project; accessed on October 18, 2019.