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Majority of mathematicians hail from 24 scientific ‘families’
- jackmott 10y agoNote that title may suggest this is a genetic thing, but this is about the genealogy of students and teachers, not genetics.
- im4w1l 10y agoTo further clarify: The teacher is considered the "parent" of the student in their analysis.
- mysterypie 10y agoThe result is therefore quite boring. It's like saying famous actors have worked with other famous actors, and lots of actors can thereby trace their themselves through a chain of actors back to Charlie Chaplin. (Too bad it wasn't about genetics -- now that would have been interesting.)
- beagle3 10y agoA teacher/mentor is not the same as "worked with". When Kevin Bacon appears in a film with X, who is the master, and who is the student?
- posterboy 10y agoObviously, Kevin Bacon is the root node of the graph, or rather the producer with the necessary vitamin C. I also felt reminded of the Five Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
- xapata 10y agoThe relationship between PhD student and advisor is often much more like apprentice and master than the relationship between two actors/actresses working together.
- jamestnz 10y agoIndeed, perhaps a more apt analogy from acting would be the many famous actors who trained under Lee Strasberg (Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, James Dean, Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, Ellen Burstyn and others). Strasberg in turn was a student of the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski[1]. And so it goes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_acting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_acting
- tgb 10y agoIn particular, one rarely has more than one advisor, perhaps two in some circumstances.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dmichulke 10y agoHaving worked with is a 1:n relationship Having an advisor is 1:1 (with a few exceptions like 2 PhDs or 2 advisors for one PhD)
- kensai 10y agoActually the title suggests nothing if you understand the role of the ''s.
- return0 10y agoWaiting for this to explode in some mainstream medium...
- thearn4 10y agoUsing the Mathematics Genealogy Project[1], I was able to produce a "family tree" of my own: http://i.imgur.com/HvCI97I.png http://i.imgur.com/HvCI97I.png Graphs produced from many of my peers end up looking very similar, true to the subject of the article. It seems that Gauss in particular trained a great many students. [1] https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/ https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/
- Ologn 10y agoI did one too of people I'm interested in http://i.imgur.com/JuHbnk9.png http://i.imgur.com/JuHbnk9.png ( http://imgur.com/a/mhFn3 http://imgur.com/a/mhFn3 ) Minsky, Abelson, McCarthy, Sussman, Steele, Dijkstra, Papert, Winograd, Erdos, Cantor, Wirth, Aho, Ritchie, Kleene, Turing etc. Most are descended from Gauss and Euler, some from both.
- ivan_ah 10y agoWhat software did you use for the graph? Looks nice.
- Kaizyn 10y agohttp://graphviz.org http://graphviz.org
- thearn4 10y agoI have a Python script that generates it. I have it run every few days via cronjob, and puts a diff of the old and new graph dotfile in my dropbox if something new is added to it. https://github.com/thearn/math-genealogy https://github.com/thearn/math-genealogy (note: not the most idiomatic python code, I scrambled to do it quick before a math conference)
- ivan_ah 10y agoThx. It seems the "nice design" is just removing the bubbles + making edges bold: digraph genealogy { graph [charset="utf-8"]; node [shape=plaintext]; edge [style=bold]; ... I definitely like it better than the default bubbles digraph.
- hackuser 10y agoHow do they define "family"? I tried to find that in the article, but didn't see it (and didn't read every word in order to discover it). Colloquially, you might say two families are distinct if there are no marriages or blood ties between them. But if you go back far enough, are there any distinct families by that definition, especially within one country or region? EDIT: Nevermind. I can see how, by limiting relationships to one advisor relationship for each person, there would be more distinct families (or in another language, disconnected graphs).
- mixedmath 10y agoAdvisor-Advisee relationships now. I'm a math PhD student, and I can trace my "mathematical family" back to each of Newton, Leibniz, and the physician mentioned in the article Sigismondo Polcastro. What I learn from looking at my family tree is that it's quite interconnected. The additional relationships come from students who claim more than one advisor (like almost all of Hardy and Littlewood's students, for instance) or students who got multiple PhDs and therefore have multiple advisors.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- searine 10y agoThis is pretty common. Us geneticists have used Flytree (later academictree.org) to figure out our lineages. http://academictree.org/ http://academictree.org/
- hasenj 10y agoIs there anything similar for computer science?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wyager 10y agoThe trees don't go back very far. We have at most 2 or 3 generations at this point.
- posterboy 10y agoThat seems wrong. A fresh PhD doesn't have to wait a full generation for a graduate to father.
- goldenkey 10y agoToo funny. Why do you think Computer Science is a unique subject of its own? Its deeply connected to mathematics and the only people doing CS back in the day were mathematicians. Go read some of Dijkstra's letters from the 50s. They are publicly available online. If you want to be a code monkey, have fun. But know that you are second rate to those that know the identities of computation. Mathematics is everything. [1] Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was a Dutch computer scientist. A theoretical physicist by training, he worked as a programmer at the Mathematisch Centrum from 1952 to 1962. Wikipedia
- microtherion 10y agoYou've certainly reproduced Dijkstra's opinion on the matter faithfully. Given that his life's work was pretty much to jet between conferences and bad-mouth those of his colleagues who actually DID produce useful software, it stands to reason that he would elevate mathematics over engineering.
- goldenkey 10y agoDijkstra contributed so much to actual computer science. You are way off base. Leslie Lamport was also a magnimonious computer scientist. Guess what his PHD was in? Mathematics with a dissertation in singularities of analytic partial differential equations. CS is absolute monkey business without a real mathematics education. Face it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Lamport https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Lamport
- c3534l 10y agoSerious question, how much does your Ph.D. advisor actually matter? I would think that the fact that scientific findings are published for everyone to read would imply that a person gets more of their knowledge from the common pool than the teachers they worked with. So basically I'm asking if these 24 families are actually meaningful in some way, or just an arbitrary grouping.
- roel_v 10y agoOnly a bit for the 'look who I published with' factor, but a lot when it comes to teaching how to get published, how to do efficient research and work ethic in general. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to know up front how your relationship with your advisor will play out.
- semi-extrinsic 10y agoThe sad truth is that it matters quite a bit for getting your papers into a good journal. It's just human nature (may even be subconscious) that reviewers are a bit kinder on a paper with a Harvard professor as the last author than one with a professor from the University of Southern Mississippi. Some journals have tried double-blinded peer review, but it's difficult to do well. You have to remove important bits from the paper, like "this builds on our previous study [3]" or "our software has previously been verified and validated, see [6]".
- tachyonbeam 10y agoFurthermore, people in the field kind of know who is working on what. No amount of editing will allow you to anonymize that.
- denzil_correa 10y agoA recommendation from an influential professor can help you get ahead in the queue for competitive positions.
- xapata 10y agoQuite meaningful. You can observe large differences of opinion in some fields that carry on from advisor to student. Take "freshwater" vs "saltwater" economics for example.
- m_mueller 10y agoInteresting that Switzerland had way more math PhDs than France and Austria in the early 20th. Which part of Austria Hungary was counted? Was this an effect of the wars?
- posterboy 10y agoThat's a mighty peer review ring :P
- SuperGent 10y agoFirst thing this reminded me of was master-student lineages in Buddhists, and martial arts.
- sn41 10y agoThere is a long lineage of gurus and students (as far as I understand it, this is academic lineage, not genetic) in the Hindu Upanishad, Brihadaranyaka: Chapter II, Section VI [1], ending with Brahman as the ultimate teacher. There may be similar things in other scriptures as well. [1] http://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/the-brihadaranyaka-upanishad/d/doc117954.html http://www.wisdomlib.org/hinduism/book/the-brihadaranyaka-up...
- nsomaru 10y agothis might be useful further reading for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru%E2%80%93shishya_tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru%E2%80%93shishya_tradition
- mollerhoj 10y agoThe graph reveals what happened to the academic class during the darkest part of Germanys history: It looks like most of the mathematicians fled to the US! Also, I thought Russia produced many more matematicans than shown but maybe I'm just making false assumptions
- S_Daedalus 10y agoUnder Peter, Russia imported a lot of great minds, who then fled when things started to get horrible. They've produced some greats, but shockingly few when you consider how large the country their working with is.
- gaius 10y agoRussia is actually not that large population-wise.
- S_Daedalus 10y agoMore than 140 million is pretty huge, and that's modern Russia, not what it used to be with all of its empire, and later satellite states.
- gaius 10y agoLess than half the population of the US, tho', and only double the UK, you have to compare like with like.
- S_Daedalus 10y agoIn what way does that relate to the original point? Russia doesn't have the record of producing mathematicians at a rate of a much smaller country like Germany.
- gaius 10y agoYou asserted that Russia should produce more mathematicians because it is large. But large mainly empty land area will not have that effect.
- kensai 10y agoBtw, there is also a Neurotree for Neuroscientists. And I bet there are other trees as well. :) http://neurotree.org/ http://neurotree.org/
- jcbeard 10y agoIt's also about familial/class privilege. Once you get in with a good mentor (for academics that means advisor)...it sets you up for life. Getting into a good lab (train under uber mentor X or Y), no matter if your work is crap or not (definitely not implying elite lab work is poo, simply emphasizing to make a point) will gain you citations and socialization that a lesser one would not. Want to find good work from university of Smallville USA (or equiv int'l uni)...it exists, you just wouldn't know it from the hype. It's nobodies fault really (except our own), just the way the system is setup. To break out takes extreme amounts of work, and likely can't happen. So you end up with entrenched "genealogies" like the one for mathematics. I'd suspect you could find the same in computer science (despite it being a rather young field) and computer engineering. Things like double blind conference submissions help, but even there there is trendiness to consider as a limiting factor. Going further, breaking out of this rut requires us to disseminate how to get ahead more than anything else. Who should people talk to? Where should they apply? What programs are available? What are the best conferences/journals to submit to? These are all things people in these elite circles have (even if they don't have the $$ background) which provide them a leg up over everyone else. How we even the playing field, no idea...it's a monumental task. I for one start by not caring where somebody went to school, what they look like, what their gender is, nor how they pronounce things. Can we all do that? I certainly hope so.
- ThePhysicist 10y agoIn France this effect is very visible as well. Many of my colleagues at the CEA (a very good research institute where many people from the French elite system work) had parents working in research as well, many of them at the same institutes, and I think if you'd look at the statistics in detail you'd probably see some strong bias for self selection within the system. That doesn't mean that the people in the system aren't very good (they usually are), just that it's very difficult for outsiders to get in. This in turn is probably due to the lack of knowledge about how the admission system works: While the centralized tests are of course fair in the sense that everyone gets the same questions, being well prepared for them takes years of preparation that already starts by selecting the right school for your children. What makes me a bit sad here is that there is probably much more scientific talent out there that we're not tapping into by not providing good study conditions for everyone, and this is something that we must change.
- pzone 10y agoThis scarcely known researcher Sigusmondo Polcastro at the top of the list seemed a bit strange. 105,277 descendents, why so many? I looked him up and clicked through his geneaology. Turns out if follow through a few generations, you find Carl Friedrich Gauss, with 74930, or about 75% of Mr. Polcastro's family, and the first name I recognized along that tree. After Gauss you find a tree of mathemeticians like Bessel, Klein, Hilbert. It seems a bit strange not to mention him.
- Eridrus 10y agoThis seems like a sort of non-story; what it takes for there to be a new family tree is someone entering the field without an advisor in this dataset (i.e. probably an advisor from a different field) and then taking on PhD students, etc. And that seems unlikely at different points in time for a variety of different reasons.
- golemotron 10y agoBy this analysis I wonder whether Ramanujan would be in Hardy's family? In terms of strength it should be the other way around.
- mrcactu5 10y agoObserve that Gauss was part of the Polcastro family tree. It takes a lot of clicking to verify as much https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=18230 https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=18230 Pfaff https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=18231 https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=18231 Gauss
- awl130 10y agoin a tree structure, isn't 24 just an arbitrary number based on which level of the tree you make your claim? if all of mathematics, for example, can be traced ultimately to the first mathematician ever, then the argument can be made that 100% of mathematicians hail from one 'family', or indeed one person.