| Many students (often in the more theoretical fields) proudly trace their academic lineage back to Gauss, Church, et al. Though some find this a point worth bragging over, I've always believed that having famous academic ancestors was less an indication of future success than an indication that academiaa small world todaywas an even smaller world 50, 100, or 400 years ago. Trees fanout fast. Poorly advised students are less likely to become professors. Professors co-advise. To test this hypothesis, I looked up my ancestry, and sure enough it goes back to Vannevar Bush and Huffman, no small fry in 20th century science. This page used to say that I suspected if I had complete records they would go back to Newton or Gauss. Well, thanks to http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=10801 I have better records and it actually does go back to Gauss! It also goes back to Poisson, Lagrange, Euler, Bernoulli (Johann advised Jacob), Leibniz, and Fourier. I wonder if I could trace it back to Aristotle... Academic Genealogy for James Hendricks as far back as is known: Great Great Great Great Grandfather Prof. Vannevar Bush (3/11/1890 - 6/30/1974) Taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EE Great Great Great Grandfather Prof. Samuel Hawks Caldwell (1904 - ) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EE Great Great Grandfather Prof. David A. Huffman (1925 - 10/7/99) University of California at Santa Cruz, Founded CS Department Great Grandfather Prof. Richard Y. Kain University of Minnesota, ECE Grandfather Prof. Arvind (Minnesota 1973) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EECS Advisor (1) Prof. James Hoe (MIT 2000) Carnegie Mellon University, ECE Wow... This eventually actually does go to Gauss! http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=10801 Great^7 Grandfather ... To be completed later ... Great^6 Grandfather Christian Felix Klein (PhD 1868) Co-advised by Julius Plucker and Rudolf Lipschitz Friedrich-Alexander-Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg Great^5 Grandfather Carl Louis Ferdinand Lindemann (PhD 1873) Universitat Konigsberg Great Great Great Great Grandfather Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld (PhD 1891) Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Munchen Great^4 Great Great Great Grandfather Prof. Ernst Adolph Guillemin (PhD 1926) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, EE Great Great Great Grandfather Prof. Bill Kirby Linvill (MIT 1949) Stanford University, EE Great Great Grandfather Prof. Bernie Widrow (MIT 1956) Stanford University Great Grandfather Prof. Dick Mattson (He showed the OPT algorithm for caches, as well as how to simulate all sizes of a LRU cache at once.) Stanford University Grandfather Prof. Yale Patt University of Michigan, ECE Advisor (2) Prof. Greg Ganger Carnegie Mellon University, ECE | |
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