Academic Ancestry

Family Tree

Nowadays, there are many databases and digital tools to trace one’s academic lineage (e.g., the Mathematics Genealogy Project, the Academic Family Tree, or the Neurotree). Unfortunately, it is not always clear what underlying data sources they operate on. I was able to trace and verify the sources regarding my lineage up to Georg Ludwig König and Hermann Ulrici. From there on it became uncertain: I couldn’t find out who supervised Ulrici’s thesis and while there are many assertions that König was supervised by Christian Gottlob Heyne, I haven’t been able to verify this.

Interestingly enough, König himself worked for some time in Oldenburg, where – more than 200 years later – I did my doctorate. It’s a small world.

Erdős number

My Erdős number is 6.