Comments on: … begat …

By: joel turnipseed

joel turnipseed — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 01:23:59 +0000

Hmmm… I’m confused: Kripke is on the list, but he doesn’t have a PhD (did he even finish his BA?). How can he have a “parent”? Also, very incomplete, as several of Donald Davidson’s children (my former professors) are missing.

By: agm

agm — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 00:33:43 +0000

Now that I think of it, Leibniz was waht we would call these days an ambassador-at-large (if I remember my history of math class correctly). Interesting…

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 20:21:44 +0000

Thanks for the further information, David- I appreciate it (especialy since I was too lazy to look it up myself!)

By: David Velleman

David Velleman — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 19:35:21 +0000

Sorry -- I was looking at the wrong Bernoulli brother. It's Johann who is listed as Leibniz's student. Johann's biography is here. It says:

Johann Bernoulli also began a correspondence with Leibniz which was to prove very fruitful. In fact this turned out to be the most major correspondence which Leibniz carried out. This was a period of considerable mathematical achievement for Johann Bernoulli. Although he was working on his doctoral dissertation in medicine he was producing numerous papers on mathematical topics which he was publishing and also important results which were contained in his correspondence.

Obviously, the fact that Bernoulli corresponded with Leibniz while writing his dissertation doesn't make Leibniz his dissertation advisor.

By: David Velleman

David Velleman — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 19:27:31 +0000

Well, Matt, that's interesting. I was just reporting the genealogy as it is recorded in the Mathematics Genealogy Project. But now that you've raised the question, I see that the MGP may not be reliable. For example this biography of Jacob Bernoulli says nothing about his stuying with Leibniz. So maybe the lineage I listed is apocryphal.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 14:26:09 +0000

I was quite curious about the Leibniz claim- I don’t recall him ever having been a teacher in a formal sense at all- a tutor to princes and princesses perhaps, but I’m moderately sure he never held a university position or really taught people. Can anyone explain how that chain that Velleman points to is supposed to work? I’m happy to learn something new hear, but I’d always thought that Leibniz wasn’t ever a formal teacher, and if we’re going to allow informal teaching or “learned from” and the like, the list will get much looser, I’d think. Someone who knows Leibniz welll, please help!

By: Greg Restall

Greg Restall — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 11:57:19 +0000

The mathematical genealogy project is great. I was delighted to find out that my family tree goes back to Weierstrass and Gauss. (You're right about those German mathematicians. Apparently, my line goes back at least to Otto Mencke, who was granted his Doctorate from Leipzig in 1668.)