Abstract:

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." -Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton's quote reminds us of the debt of gratitude that we owe the mathematicians who brought us to the level of mathematical advancement that we enjoy today. The Math Genealogy Project is in part an attempt to honor those mathematicians by tracing advisor/advisee relationships from our current PhDs back to their mathematical ancestors. In some cases, we can follow a mathematician's intellectual genealogy all the way back to the 14th century! For this talk, we will demonstrate the use of the math genealogy Web site and discuss some history, fun facts, and interesting statistics about the Mathematics Genealogy Project.