The Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) is a web-based
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...
for the
academic genealogy
An academic genealogy (or scientific genealogy) organizes a family tree of scientists and scholars according to mentoring relationships, often in the form of dissertation supervision relationships, and not according to genetic relationships as ...
of
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
s.
[.] it contained information on 300,152
mathematical scientists who contributed to research-level mathematics. For a typical mathematician, the project entry includes graduation year, thesis title (in its
Mathematics Subject Classification
The Mathematics Subject Classification (MSC) is an alphanumerical classification scheme that has collaboratively been produced by staff of, and based on the coverage of, the two major mathematical reviewing databases, Mathematical Reviews and Zen ...
), ''
alma mater'',
doctoral advisor
A doctoral advisor (also dissertation director, dissertation advisor; or doctoral supervisor) is a member of a university faculty whose role is to guide graduate students who are candidates for a doctorate, helping them select coursework, as well ...
, and doctoral students.
[.]
Origin of the database
The project grew out of founder
Harry Coonce's desire to know the name of his advisor's advisor.
[.] Coonce was Professor of Mathematics at
Minnesota State University, Mankato
Minnesota State University, Mankato (MNSU, MSU, or Minnesota State) is a public university in Mankato, Minnesota, United States. It is Minnesota's second-largest university and has over 145,000 living alumni worldwide. Founded in 1868, it is t ...
, at the time of the project's founding, and the project went online there in the autumn of 1997.
[Mulcahy, Colm;]
The Mathematics Genealogy Project Comes of Age at Twenty-one
(PDF) AMS Notices (May 2017) Coonce retired from Mankato in 1999, and in the autumn of 2002 the university decided that it would no longer support the project. The project relocated at that time to
North Dakota State University. Since 2003, the project has also operated under the auspices of the
American Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...
and in 2005 it received a grant from the
Clay Mathematics Institute.
Harry Coonce has been assisted by Mitchel T. Keller, Assistant Professor at
Morningside College. Keller is currently the Managing Director of the project.
Mission and scope
The Mathematics Genealogy Mission statement: "Throughout this project when we use the word '
mathematics
Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
' or '
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
' we mean that word in a very inclusive sense.
[ Thus, all relevant data from ]statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...
, computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
, philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
or operations research
Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...
is welcome."
The genealogy information is obtained from sources such as ''Dissertation Abstracts International'' and ''Notices of the American Mathematical Society'', but may be supplied by anyone via the project's website.Joseph-Louis Lagrange
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia[Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...](_blank)
.
The oldest chronological entries in the project are Abu Sahl 'Isa ibn Yahya al-Masihi (who died c. 1010) and his student Ibn Sina, commonly known in the West as Avicenna. They each have, as of May 2024, more than 220,000 descendants in the genealogy.
Reliability and completeness
It has been noted that "the data collected by the mathematics genealogy project are self-reported, so there is no guarantee that the observed genealogy network is a complete description of the mentorship network. In fact, 16,147 mathematicians do not have a recorded mentor, and of these, 8,336 do not have any recorded proteges."
See also
* Neurotree, Academic Family Tree
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Projects established in 1997
Internet properties established in 1997
Mathematical projects
Historiography of mathematics
Mathematical databases