Mathematical Genealogies

I have become increasingly interested in genealogy, both mathematical and physical, over the past few years. As a gift I made a small diagram of the mathematical family of Guenter Pilz, which I then extended several times until his first Grandchild (Nebojsa Mudrinski) arrived in late 2009. This also brought the first woman into his tree, and none other than Emmy Noether.

Since then I have made a few more and, ecause people have asked for them a couple of times, I thought I would let people download them from here.

Some notes as to how to make them.

I have relied strongly on the Mathematical Genealogy Project for data and have added a few details that I have independently discovered. I have also kept some of the less formal "doctor-parent" relationships in my diagrams, for instance Wen Fong Ke is not a "real" parent of Gerhard Wendt, but there is a strong "relationship" there. I am on the other extreme, as both my "doctor fathers" were very involved in my thesis, from complementary angles. I hope no one is offended by their inclusion in this tree.

I have also added a few cousins: because of the name of the university, we have added Johannes Kepler, who has no continuing line of descendants. I also found some other specials so I added them - feel free to enjoy the easter eggs!

For these diagrams, I have taken a focus person or two and looked at all the parents of all their children. So we get a larger and more convoluted family tree - somehow interesting to follow ones finger around in and wonder who some of the people are.

I summarised the data into DOT files, the graphical layout format used by Graphviz, and then compiled them into SVGs. GraphViz is amazingly powerful as an automated graph layout tool, we use it for keeping track of the local FunkFeuer topology. I added several invisible connections in the diagrams to make them easier to read.

The SVG files were then imported into Inkscape, an open source and quite easy to use (well, I manage it, so it is not rocket science or high art!) vector graphics package. I added logos and suchlike, made it look decent, and exported PDFs.

Note that you might need to dig into the SVG file exported from GraphViz and change the selected font from Times-Roman to TimesNewRoman - I am sure this should be easy within Inkscape, but for me it was easier to change it in a simple text editor.

If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact me; if you ask nicely I might even send you the DOT files....

Email tim.boykett (at) algebra.uni-linz.ac.at


Also heavily involved in Time's Up, a laboratory for the composition of experimental situations.





Updated: November 2011


Mathematicians are machines that turn coffee into theorems