I trace my PhD ancestry back to a line of eminent German mathematicians and applied mathematicians. Each person listed in the table was the PhD advisor of the preceding person. This information was obtained from the Mathematics Genealogy Project.


# NAME PhD YEAR PhD INSTITUTION
1 Michael Wendl (bio) 1994 Washington University
2 R. K. Agarwal (bio) 1975 Stanford University
3 Milton Van Dyke (bio) 1949 California Institute of Technology
4 P. A. Lagerstrom (bio) 1942 Princeton University
5 Salomon Bochner (bio) 1921 Universität Berlin
6 Erhard Schmidt (bio) 1905 Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
7 David Hilbert (bio) 1885 Universität Königsberg
8 Ferdinand von Lindemann (bio) 1873 Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
9 Felix Klein (bio) 1868 Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
10 Julius Plücker (bio) 1823 Philipps-Universität Marburg
11 Christian Gerling (bio) 1812 Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
12 Carl Friedrich Gauss (bio) 1799 Universität Helmstedt (defunct 1810)
13 Johann Pfaff (bio) 1786 Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
14 Abraham Kästner (bio) 1739 Universität Leipzig
15 Christian Hausen (bio) 1713 Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
16 Johann Wichmannshausen (bio) 1685 Universität Leipzig
17 Otto Mencke (bio) 1665 Universität Leipzig

My Erdös Number is 3. The Erdös Number is popular in the folklore of mathematics and is also studied as a formalized social network.


ERDÖS # NAME ERDÖS PUBLICATION LINK
0 Paul Erdös -
1 Daniel J. Kleitman Combinatorica 12, 287
2 Eric S. Lander J. Comp. Biol. 6, 419
3 Michael C. Wendl Nature 409, 860