Michael Cwikel My mathematical ancestry

My Mathematical ancestry

Probably almost all mathematicians working today, if they trace back to find who were their teachers and the teachers of their teachers, and so on, will find that they are the “descendants” of a number of very famous mathematicians.

In my case I found that, via my splendid Ph.D. supervisor Yoram Sagher, I am the “descendant” of, among others, Jacob and Johann Bernoulli, Chebyshev, Darboux, Dirichlet, Euler, Fourier, Gauss, Hilbert, Klein, Lagrange, Leibniz, Markov, Picard, Poisson, Sierpinski, Steinhaus, and Zygmund.

My mathematical “genealogy” is shown in five files. (Several files are needed because some of my “ancestors” had two Ph.D. supervisors.) Just click on each number to go to the corresponding file. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

I obtained the information in these files from the mathematical genealogy website.
http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu
or its “mirror”, which currently works better, at
http://www.genealogy.ams.org

More information about my teacher and my teacher’s teacher’s (where “teacher” means supervisor for Ph.D.) etc. and their theses can be found via this website.

In these files, the year when, and city or university where a mathematician obtained his doctoral degree is written under his name, if these are known. A number in square brackets [N] next to the name of some mathematician where N=1,2,3,4 or 5, means that by clicking on that “[N]” you can move to the file which contains details of the mathematical “ancestry” of that mathematician.
If such a number does not appear next to the top member of some “branch” in some file, this means that the Ph.D. supervisor of that mathematician is apparently unknown.

Here is a list of all my 38 known mathematical “ancestors” which appear in these files:

Bernoulli, Jacob
Bernoulli, Johann
Brashman, Nikolai Dmitrievich
Chasles, Michel
Chebyshev, Pafnuty Lvovich
Darboux, Gaston
Dirichlet, Gustav Peter Lejeune
Euler, Leonhard
Fourier, Jean-Baptiste Joseph
Gauss, Carl Friedrich
Gerling, Christian Ludwig
Hausen, Christian August
Hilbert, David
Kaestner, Abraham Gotthelf
Klein, C. Felix (Christian)
Lagrange, Joseph Louis
von Langsdorf, Karl Christian
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
Lindemann, C. L. Ferdinand (Carl Louis)
Lipschitz, Rudolf Otto Sigismund
von Littrow, Joseph Johann
Markov, Andrei Andreyevich
Mazurkiewicz, Stefan
Mencke, Otto
Ohm, Martin
Pfaff, Johann Friedrich
Picard, C. Emile (Charles)
Plucker, Julius
Poisson, Simeon Denis
Rajchman, Aleksander
Sagher, Yoram
Sierpinski, Waclaw
Steinhaus, Wladyslaw Hugo Dyonizy
Voronoy, Georgy Fedoseevich
Weigel, Erhard
Wichmannshausen, Johann Christoph
Zaremba, Stanislaw
Zygmund, Antoni

Further Remarks:
Martin Ohm was the younger brother of the physicist Georg Simon Ohm who discovered Ohm’s Law.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5.