Show HN: Trace the history of academia

6 points by vedantk 16 years ago · 2 comments · 1 min read

Wikipedia often lists the doctoral advisors of famous scientists. I wanted to be able to pick a scientist and recursively find their mentors. This information has no practical value, but I thought it was interesting. John McCarthy's mentor history is especially awesome;

John McCarthy (computer scientist) >> Solomon Lefschetz ... >> >> >> >> >> >> Carl Friedrich Gauss ... >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Jakob Thomasius ... >> >> >> >> >> >> Siméon Denis Poisson >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Joseph Louis Lagrange >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Leonhard Euler >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Johann Bernoulli >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Pierre-Simon Laplace >> >> >> >> >> >> Joseph Fourier