Intellectual Genealogy: Who's Your Teacher?

Genealogy studies who family members were and the heritage involved--tracing your family tree as far back and wide as possible to see who is related to whom. Your heritage is what you get from genealogy. Let's sa you discovered you are distantly related to royalty. Your royal heritage is yours because of your genealogy. I've always believed that family is what you make it. My family includes those people who I let get close enough to affect my development. I consider teachers and friends to be part of my family. I get a lot from my teachers and friends so I consider my intellectual heritage more important than biological heritage.

My introduction to intellectual genealogy came in my college piano class. My piano teacher recounted her musical genealogy all the way back to J.S. Bach. This meant that I was also taught by someone who was intellectually descended from J.S. Bach. Any music students I teach will also share that intellectual and musical heritage.

Genealogy gets me inspired for a lot of reasons. Mostly genealogy makes me feel closer to certain famous people. It reminds me that we are all human and all related. If someone biologically or intellectually related can achieve a certain amount of success then there is no reason why I can't as well. Those who came before me are no better than I am necessarily. They worked hard and were rewarded for it.

One step academic genealogy records can help a lot with intellectual pursuits. When applying to graduate programs, and competitive careers, or even regular jobs, who you know is often as important as what you know. What you know can sometimes be difficult to verify if you haven't already established yourself. Other successful humans vouching for you or even just having successfully taught you can make the difference between getting that next stage of your life or not.

Whenever visiting writers come to our campus we get to ask questions. One question I ask is "Who do you read?" This is basically asking about their intellectual genealogy and heritage. I start to see the gifts they have received when I read their writing. By reading, I become one of their descendants and part of that literary intellectual genealogy.

I found The Mathematics Genealogy Project, which attempts to comprehensively compile the mathematics family tree of teachers as far back as possible. The genealogy project updates with current mathematicians as they break into their own place in academic heritage. I have spent way too many hours looking up my mathematical genealogy and heritage. Having taken a history of math course helps since we are often uninformed about some of the big names in mathematical history. The Mathematics Genealogy Project mostly tracks thesis advisors in order to keep the records relatively clean and simple. Even so, tracking limited intellectual genealogy is quite inspiring.

When I feel unintelligent, I can go to the Mathematics Genealogy Project and plug in some of my professors names. I trace them back until I find mathematicians I recognize. When I do so I find that my intellectual lineage is full of brilliant people. Some took a while to be successful. Some were thought to be crazy. In the end all of them made a difference in their world. That is my intellectual heritage.

So, do you want to know some of the big names in my math intellectual genealogy?
C. Felix Klein, Simeon Denis Poisson, Joseph Louis Lagrange, Leonhard Euler, Johann Bernoulli, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Desiderius Erasmus, to name a few.

I've always been inspired by my direct intellectual genealogy. It wasn't until I wrote this article that I realized the depth of my intellectual heritage. This is the value of education. People are eager to pass on their knowledge and skills either personally or in writing. It is like gold sitting on a shelf or in office hours just waiting to make a difference. Education is what you make of it. What is your intellectual genealogy? Who from history inspires you to greatness? What is your academic heritage?